The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Utah House approves plan to bring back firing squad
Next step uncertain for alternative to lethal injections.
SALT LAKE CITY — A hotly contested proposal to resurrect Utah’s use of firing squads to carry out executions narrowly passed a key vote Friday in the state’s Legislature as it and other states struggle to continue using the lethal injection method of execution.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 3934 to approve the measure, sending it to an uncertain fate in the state’s GOP-controlled Senate. Leaders in that chamber have thus far declined to say if they’ll support it, and Utah’s Republican governor, Gary Herbert, won’t say if he’ll sign it.
Rep. Paul Ray, a Republican who sponsored the measure, argues that a team of trained marksmen is faster and more humane than the drawnout deaths that have occurred in cases where lethal injections have been botched. The drugs used in the injection have also become increasingly difficult to obtain, with some manufacturers refusing to sell them to states with capital punishment. Efforts by states to hide the identity of suppliers face lawsuits.
Under Ray’s bill, Utah would avoid those obstacles by calling for a firing squad if the state cannot get lethal injection drugs 30 days before an execution.
Critics say the firing squad is a gruesome relic of Utah’s Wild West past and would bring international condemnation. That criticism and media attention was one of the reasons many lawmakers voted in 2004 to stop allowing condemned prisoners there to choose death by firing squad.
A handful of inmates on Utah’s death row were sentenced before the law changed and still have the option of going before a firing squad once they have exhausted any appeals. The method was last used in 2010.
The Washington, D.C.- based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, says that a firing squad is not a foolproof method because the inmate could move or shooters could miss the heart, causing a slower, more painful death.
Several opponents of the firing squad bill and the death penalty in general said they were dis- appointed by Friday’s vote but encouraged that it passed on such a slim margin.
“I think there are legislators who, while they may have complicated feelings about the death penalty, understand that this particular method is not good advertising for Utah,” said Anna Brower with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah.