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GLOSSIP v. GROSS SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting

test because of their assumption that the alternative drugs to which they pointed, pentobarbital and sodium thiopental, were available to the State. See ante, at 13– 14. This was perhaps a reasonable assumption, especially given that neighboring Texas and Missouri still to this day continue to use pentobarbital in executions. See The Death Penalty Institute, Execution List 2015, online at www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2015 (as visited June 26, 2015, and available in the Clerk of the Court’s case file). In the future, however, condemned inmates might well decline to accept States’ current reliance on lethal injec­ tion. In particular, some inmates may suggest the firing squad as an alternative. Since the 1920’s, only Utah has utilized this method of execution. See S. Banner, The Death Penalty 203 (2002); Johnson, Double Murderer Executed by Firing Squad in Utah, N. Y. Times, June 19, 2010, p. A12. But there is evidence to suggest that the firing squad is significantly more reliable than other methods, including lethal injection using the various combinations of drugs thus far developed. See A. Sarat, Gruesome Spectacles: Botched Executions and America’s Death Penalty, App. A, p. 177 (2014) (calculating that while 7.12% of the 1,054 executions by lethal injection between 1900 and 2010 were “botched,” none of the 34 executions by firing squad had been). Just as important, there is some reason to think that it is relatively quick and painless. See Banner, supra, at 203. Certainly, use of the firing squad could be seen as a devolution to a more primitive era. See Wood v. Ryan, 759 F. 3d 1076, 1103 (CA9 2014) (Kozinski, C. J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc). That is not to say, of course, that it would therefore be unconstitutional. But lethal injection represents just the latest iteration of the States’ centuries-long search for “neat and non-disfiguring homicidal methods.” C. Brandon, The Electric Chair: An