Credit: Washington Examiner
Idaho is set to allow firing squads to execute condemned inmates when the state can’t get lethal-injection drugs. A new bill was passed in the Legislature on Monday with a veto-proof majority.
The firing squads will only be used if the state cannot get the drugs needed for lethal injections. One death row inmate has already had his scheduled execution postponed multiple times because they could not obtain the drugs necessary for lethal injections.
This move by Idaho lawmakers is in line with other states that in recent times have struggled to receive older methods of execution because of difficulties obtaining drugs required for lethal injection programs. Pharmaceutical companies have been barring executioners from using their drugs, citing that they were meant to save lives, not take lives.
Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little has voiced his support for the death penalty, but he does not usually comment on legislation before he signs or vetoes it.
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Only Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma, and South Carolina currently have laws allowing firing squads if other execution methods are unavailable, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. South Carolina’s law is on hold pending the outcome of a legal challenge.
Some states began refurbishing electric chairs as standbys for when lethal drugs are unavailable. Others have considered — and at times, used — largely untested execution methods. In 2018, Nevada executed Carey Dean Moore with a never-before-tried drug combination that included the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Alabama has built a system for executing people using nitrogen gas to induce hypoxia, but it has not yet been used.
During a historic round of 13 executions in the final months of Donald Trump’s presidency, the federal government opted for the sedative pentobarbital as a replacement for lethal drugs used in the 2000s. It issued a protocol allowing firing squads for federal executions if necessary, but that method was not used.
Lawyers for federal inmates who were eventually put to death ruled that firing squads are quicker and cause less pain than pentobarbital, which they say causes a sensation like drowning.
However, in 2019, U.S. lawyers cited an expert as saying that someone shot by firing squad can remain conscious for 10 seconds and that it would be “severely painful, especially related to shattering of bone and damage to the spinal cord.”
President Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, ordered a temporary pause on federal executions in 2021 while the Justice Department reviewed protocols. Garland didn’t say how long the moratorium would last.
Idaho Senator Doug Ricks is a Republican and sponsored the state’s firing squad bill. He told his fellow senators on Monday that the state’s difficulty in finding lethal injection drugs could continue “indefinitely” and that he believes death by firing squad is more “humane.”
“This is a rule of law issue — our criminal system should work and penalties should be exacted,” Ricks said.
Senator Dan Foreman is also a Republican and he said that firing squad execution would traumatize the people who have to carry them out, the people who witness them, and the people who have to clean up afterward.
“I’ve seen the aftermath of shootings, and it’s psychologically damaging to anybody who witnesses it,” Foreman said.
“The use of the firing squad is, in my opinion, beneath the dignity of the state of Idaho.”
