FILE - A chair sits in the execution chamber at the Utah State Prison on June 18, 2010 after Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by the firing squad in Draper, Utah. Idaho lawmakers passed a bill on March 20, 2023 that would allow the use of firing squads if the state is unable to obtain the drugs required for its lethal injection program. The bill will be sent to Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a bill in the bill allowing firing squads to execute death row inmates when lethal injection drugs are not available, making Idaho the fifth U.S. state to allow the execution method.
The Department of Correction will have up to five days to decide whether lethal injection is available after a death warrant is issued. If not, the department must carry out the execution by firing squad. Little signed the bill on Friday.
Little wrote a transmittal letter after signing the bill, which was reported by the Idaho Statesman, which shows that the justice can and must be done by minimizing stress on corrections personnel. A jury convicted the people in the death row of their crimes, and they were lawfully sentenced to death. The state of Idaho is responsible to follow the law and make sure that lawful criminal sentences are carried out. A corrections department spokesman did not respond to its request for comment Friday evening, according to the news outlet.
The states have had difficulty getting the drugs required for longstanding lethal injection programs. Pharmaceutical companies have been banning executioners from using their drugs, saying they were meant to save lives, not take them.
Idaho will join Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina as the states that authorize death by firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. South Carolina's law is on hold until the outcome of a legal challenge.
The last inmate to be executed by a firing squad in the U.S. was Ronnie Lee Gardner. He was executed on June 18th, 2010 for killing an attorney in a courthouse escape attempt. Utah is the only state to have used firing squads in the past 50 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Leo Morales, the executive director of the ACLU of Idaho, called the firing squad an archaic and particularly gruesome execution method, according to a statement by the Idaho Statesman. Morales criticized the law as a step backward, as public support for the death penalty reached an all-time low.
Instead of trying to reinstate the death penalty with a brutal execution method, Idaho lawmakers should have kept the firing squad in the dust bin of history, where it belongs, he said.