Utah brings back f iring squads for death row inmates
FACING a nationwide shortage of the drugs used in lethal injections, Utah has become the first US state to bring back firing squads.
Governor Gary Herbert yesterday signed a law approving the method of execution, even though he has called it ‘a little bit gruesome’.
the republican governor said Utah needed a back-up policy in case a shortage of the drugs persisted.
‘We regret anyone ever commits the heinous crime of aggravated murder to merit the death penalty and we prefer to use our primary method of lethal injection when such a sentence is issued,’ a spokesman for Mr Herbert said.
‘However, when a jury makes the decision and a judge signs a death warrant, enforcing that lawful decision is the obligation of the executive branch.’
the approval is the latest illustration of some states’ frustration over bungled executions and difficulty obtaining the drugs. Utah is one of several states seeking new forms of capital punishment after a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma last year. States have struggled to keep up their drug inventories as european manufacturers opposed to capital punishment refuse to sell the components of lethal injections to US prisons. the bill’s sponsor, republican congressman Paul ray, argued that a team of trained marksmen was faster and more decent than the drawn-out deaths involved when lethal injections go awry.
Opponents say firing squads are barbaric, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah saying the bill makes the state ‘look backward and backwoods’.
ralph Dellapiana, director of Utahns for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said: ‘It’s an embarrassment to Utah. We should be taking the moral lead on this. You can’t be both pro-life and pro-death.’
Utah is the only state in the past 40 years to carry out such a death sentence, with three executions by firing squad since 1976.
the first man to be shot was double murderer Gary Gilmore in January 1977. Gilmore became the subject of norman Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the executioner’s Song, and his final words – ‘Let’s do it!’ – were reportedly the inspiration behind the nike slogan, Just Do It.
the most recent execution by firing squad was in 2010, when ronnie Lee Gardner was put to death by five policemen with Winchester rifles. Utah stopped offering inmates the choice of firing squad in 2004, but convicts who were sentenced before that date could still select that option.