In 1982, Texas became the first US state to execute a prisoner via lethal injection, a method proposed in 1977 in Oklahoma. Believed to be cheaper and more humane than previous methods – the electric chair and gas chamber – by the end of the century it became an option for all death row inmates in US states where execution was legal, and the only method available in some of them.
How humane it actually is has come into question in the following years, with several high-profile cases of harrowing botched executions – sometimes performed by unqualified staff – and questions of whether the cocktail of drugs used is as painless as first thought, even when administered correctly. Prisoners have had to endure deaths where assistants were unable to find veins for hours, or telling their executioners that it's "not working" in the middle of their own execution. Others have fared worse. One doctor told a court that for many executioners it's “the first time probably in their life they have picked up a syringe" and that he had personally reduced the amount of anesthetic given to inmates when the supplier began packaging it in smaller bottles, adding that there was no execution procedure that had been written down.