SINCE THE turn of the century, capital punishment in the United States has been on an accelerating downward spiral. Fewer states sentence people to death, fewer still carry out those sentences, and the relative handful of states that continue to execute people do so with diminishing frequency.

At the same time, with vanishingly few exceptions, lethal injection has become the consensus method used for the dwindling number of executions — the only technique regarded as relatively humane, meaning absent obvious manifestations of the intentional infliction of pain.

Yet as so many states move forward, Virginia is considering a step back. That’s the direction the commonwealth would go if it enacts legislation forcing convicts to die by electric chair if lethal injection drugs cannot be found.

The legislation, passed by Richmond’s Republican-controlled House of Delegates and now before the Senate, arises from two factors: the scheduled execution of one of the state’s seven death row inmates, and the fact that drug companies have blocked the use of their products in lethal injections, leaving death penalty states scrambling.