TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — People sentenced to death in Florida could be executed by firing squads, nitrogen gas or other methods under a bill that expands Florida’s death penalty tactics.

Florida allows for lethal injection or electrocution to carry out the death penalty, with lethal injection as the default.

But a bill proposed by Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, would allow for someone to be executed by “a method not deemed unconstitutional nor cruel and unusual,” if the Florida Department of Corrections can’t get its hands on the chemicals needed for lethal injection, or if getting those chemicals becomes “impractical.”

Martin’s bill moved through its first committee Tuesday. Rep. Berny Jacques, R-Largo, is set to present his companion bill in the House on Wednesday.

The proposed change comes as Gov. Ron DeSantis has resumed executions after years of not conducting any. Since 2023, Florida has executed nine people. A 10th man is scheduled to die in April.

Martin said his bill safeguards against any future shortages of lethal injection drugs. He said the Department of Corrections hasn’t indicated any current supply issue.

“We just have to do the right thing and make sure that the law is fulfilled,” Martin said, “that our communities are protected and that the punishments are provided in a humane manner but also that they are followed through.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has never found any specific method of execution to be unconstitutional, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Of the more than 1,600 executions in the modern era of the death penalty, more than 88% have been carried out through lethal injection. Twenty have been carried out by lethal gas or the firing squad; only a handful of states authorize those tactics, according to the Death Penalty Information Center’s database.

But as pharmaceutical companies have resisted their drugs being used to kill people by ceasing the sale of their products or stopping manufacturing entirely, some states have looked toward the lesser-used tactics for executions.

Earlier this month, South Carolina executed a man by firing squad. South Carolina struggled to carry out the death penalty for 13 years, in part because the state wasn’t able to obtain the necessary drugs for lethal injection, according to the Associated Press.

And last year, Alabama became the first state in the nation to carry out an execution with nitrous gas. The state has done two other gas executions since.

Maria DeLiberato, the executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said she expects litigation if Florida chooses a new method for execution, saying that courts in other states approving a particular execution technique doesn’t necessarily apply to Florida.

But Martin, the bill sponsor in the Senate, said, “I don’t think good public policy is written with fear of litigation in mind.”

In 2023, Florida set the lowest death penalty threshold in the nation by reducing the number of jurors needed to agree to sentence someone to death to eight out of 12. The change was a DeSantis priority.

That same year, DeSantis also signed a bill that would allow child rapists to be executed, challenging existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

This year, lawmakers are pursuing a bill to allow the death penalty for certain human trafficking cases and have already passed a bill that would mandate the death penalty for immigrants in the country illegally who commit capital crimes.

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