It's pretty clear that the death penalty's days are numbered -if you can't use lethal injections, and are stymied from using other methods (let's face it, the electric chair, the hangman's noose, the firing squad, the gas chamber, etc. are not going to make a comeback), we are going to end up with a situation in which we have banned the death penalty in all but name.
Actually, Oklahoma has already approved electrocution and the firing squad as alternate methods should lethal injection become impossible to perform. Granted, not every state will do so, but the idea that it is possible to de facto ban the death penalty in the United States by going after individual methods is false.
It's not really going to hurt the cause of opponents if only places like Oklahoma retain this purification ritual.
Won't really help it either. The idea that history has an inevitable course of progress that we can predict will happen, even if we can't predict exactly when it will happen, is one of the nuttier ideas out there. Besides, I see no great swelling of opposition to (or support of) the death penalty. Unlike gay marriage or marihuana legalization, capital punishment is an issue that directly impacts so few people that there is nothing to serve as a catalyst. Hence this issue is one on which opinions will change slowly and it is futile to predict which way they will change.
I'm just going off of memory here, so I could be wrong, but hasn't support for capital punishment been steadily declining in the last couple of decades? I also recall that support increased following the 1970s, so it's not to suggest that the concept of execution is foolproof as younger people become of voting age, but there is also a good reason to believe that if the public is faced with only options such as electrocuting people to death as lethal injections become less feasible, the entire ritual will become less palatable.
