A bill filed in the Florida state Senate would expand the methods by which death row inmates could be executed. 

Senate Bill 1604, introduced by state Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, aims to protect Florida’s status as a death penalty state if certain execution methods like electrocution or legal injection are made unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or the Florida Supreme Court, or if lethal injection drugs are unable to be obtained in the future.

There is currently a shortage of pentobarbital, the drug used for lethal injections, which has several states scrambling to find alternative execution methods. 

In March, death row inmate Brad Sigmon of South Carolina was executed by firing squad. He was the first person in the United States to be executed in that manner in more than 15 years. 

Brad Sigmon was convicted of beating to death his estranged girlfriend’s parents in Greenville County in 2001. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP)

Lethal injection is by far the most popular execution method, accounting for 1,431 of all executions since 1976. Electrocution is second, accounting for 163.