Idaho is about to allow firing squads to execute convicted prisoners when the state can’t get lethal injection drugs, under a law the legislature passed by a veto-proof majority Monday.
Firing squads will only be used if the state can’t get the drugs needed for lethal injections — and one death row inmate has had his scheduled execution postponed several times due to drug shortages.
The move by Idaho lawmakers is in line with those of other states that have struggled in recent years to revive older methods of execution due to difficulties in obtaining drugs needed for long-term lethal injection programs. Drug companies have increasingly banned executioners from using their drugs, saying they were meant to save lives, not take them.
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Idaho Republican Governor Brad Little has expressed support for the death penalty but generally does not comment on the legislation before signing or vetoing it.
Only Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina currently have laws allowing firing squads if other methods of execution are unavailable, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. South Carolina law has been suspended pending the outcome of a legal challenge.
Some states have started refurbishing electric chairs as a standby for when deadly drugs are not available. Others have considered – and sometimes used – largely untested execution methods. In 2018, Nevada executed Carey Dean Moore with a never-before-tried drug combination containing the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Alabama has built a system to execute people using nitrogen gas to induce hypoxia, but it has not yet been used.
In a historic round of 13 executions in the final months of Donald Trump’s presidency, the federal government chose the sedative pentobarbital as a replacement for deadly drugs used in the 2000s. It issued a protocol that allowed firing squads for federal executions if necessary, but that method was not used.
Some attorneys for federal prisoners who were eventually put to death argued in court that firing squads would actually be faster and cause less pain than pentobarbital, which they said produces a sensation similar to drowning.
However, in a 2019 filing, U.S. attorneys cited an expert as saying that someone shot by a firing squad could remain conscious for 10 seconds and that it would be “severely painful, especially related to bone fractures and spinal cord damage.”
The execution chamber of the Idaho Maximum Security Institution is seen in Boise, Idaho, on October 20, 2011. (AP photo/Jessie L. Bonner, file)
President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a temporary pause on federal executions in 2021 while the Justice Department reviewed protocols. Garland did not say how long the moratorium will last.
Senator Doug Ricks of Idaho, a Republican who co-sponsored that state’s firing squad bill, told his fellow senators Monday that the state’s difficulty finding lethal injection drugs could continue “indefinitely” and that he believes death by firing squad is “humane”.
“This is a rule of law issue — our criminal system should work and penalties should be met,” Ricks said.
But Senator Dan Foreman, also a Republican, said firing squad executions would traumatize the people who carry them out, the people who witness them and the people who clean up afterwards.
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“I’ve seen the aftermath of shootings and it’s psychologically damaging to anyone who witnesses it,” Foreman said. “The use of the firing squad, in my opinion, is beneath the dignity of the state of Idaho.”
The bill comes from Republican Representative Bruce Skaug, motivated in part by the state’s inability to get Gerald Pizzuto Jr. to be executed at the end of last year. Pizzuto, who now has terminal cancer and other debilitating illnesses, spent more than three decades on death row for his role in the 1985 murder of two gold miners.
The Idaho Department of Correction estimates that it will cost about $750,000 to build or modify a death chamber for firing squad executions.
The agency’s director, Jeff Tewalt, told lawmakers last year that there are likely to be as many legal challenges for planned firing squad executions as there are for lethal injections. At the time, he said he would be reluctant to ask his staffers to participate in a firing squad.
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Both Tewalt and his former colleague Kevin Kempf played key roles in obtaining the drugs used in the 2012 execution of Richard Albert Leavitt, who flew to Tacoma, Washington, with more than $15,000 in cash to get them from a pharmacist. to buy. The trip was kept secret by the department, but revealed in court documents after University of Idaho professor Aliza Cover sued the information under a public records law.
Kempf was promoted to head the Correction Department two years later and is now the Executive Director of the Correctional Leaders Association. He said the execution process is always challenging for everyone involved, including the victims’ relatives. Those challenges could be amplified in firing squad executions, he said.
“At the same time, I must say that my thoughts go out to members of staff who may be required by law to do something akin to putting someone to death,” Kempf told the AP in a telephone interview earlier this month. “That’s not something I would assume a correctional director would take lightly, asking someone to order someone to do that.”
Biden pledged during his campaign to work to end capital punishment across the country, but as president he remained silent on the issue. Critics say his hands-off approach ran the risk of allowing states to adopt alternative methods of execution.
