LAST WORDS

AS HE faces the firing squad in the 1967 Casino Royale Woody Allen objects with: “I have a low threshold of death.” It’s a funny line, but for death row prisoners in Utah the firing squad is no laughing matter.

This week the Southwestern state became the only one in America to allow execution by firing squad.

Its Governor, Gary Herbert, signed a law on Monday permitting the controversial method’s use when no lethal injection drugs are available.

Utah is one of several states seeking new forms of capital punishment after a botched Oklahoma lethal injection 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 — or even if they go as planned.

Though Utah’s next execution is probably a few years away, Mr Ray said he wanted to settle on a back-up method now so authorities are not racing to find a solution if the drug shortage drags on.

Opponents of the measure say firing squads are barbaric, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah saying the bill makes the state “look backward and backwoods”.

Governor Herbert said he finds the firing squad “a little bit gruesome,” but said the state needs a back-up execution method.

The death penalty is legal in 32 of America’s 50 states, but Utah is the only one to have legalised the firing squad as a method of execution.

Because of the intense media attention, Utah lawmakers stopped offering inmates the choice of a death by firing squad sev- eral years ago. But a handful of inmates sentenced to death before 2004 still have the option of going before a firing squad.

Ronnie Lee Gardner, a convicted murderer who shot and killed a lawyer in an attempt to escape from prison, was the last inmate executed by a firing squad in 2010.

The death penalty has been completely abolished throughout almost the whole of Europe – only Belarus and Kazakhstan retain capital punishment.

Belarus carried out an execution last year and the most recent executions elsewhere in Europe were in Kazakhstan in 2003 and Ukraine in 1997. The last EU member state to abolish capital punishment was Latvia in 2012.

Amnesty International continues to push hard for the worldwide abolition of capital punishment.

While it no longer executes people, Europe has a long and bloody relationship with the death penalty that stretches to quite recent times.

Last year marked half a century since the UK held its last executions. Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans were hanged in April 1964 for the murder of John Alan West. The final execution to take place in Scotland happened in Aberdeen the previous August, when Henry John Burnett swung for the murder of seaman Thomas Guyan.

The death penalty wasn’t abolished in France until 1981. In 1791 the country’s National Assembly declared that the only acceptable method of execution was the guillotine.

The final execution in France took place in 1977 when murderer Hamida Djandoubi was guillotined in a prison yard.

French executions were held in public until the outbreak of World War II. Curiously, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars actor Christopher Lee witnessed the final public death by guillotine in 1939. He was 17 at the time.

“Such is life.” Australian bushranger Ned Kelly, executed by hanging, 1880.

“Forgive me sir, I meant not to do it.” Marie Antoinette apologises for stepping on the executioner’s foot before she was beheaded, Paris, 1793.

“How about this for a headline for tomorrow’s paper? French fries.” James French, executed by electric chair, Oklahoma, 1966.

“I did not get my Spaghetti-O’s, I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.” Thomas J. Grasso, executed by injection, Oklahoma, 1995.

“You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the Grim Reaper.” Robert Alton Harris, executed in California’s gas chamber, 1991.

“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” American Nathan Hale, executed by a British firing squad, New York, 1776.

“Well, gentlemen, you are about to see a baked Appel.” George Appel, executed by the electric chair, New York, 1928.

“Shoot straight you bastards and don’t make a mess of it!” Australian drover, poet and soldier Harry “the Breaker” Morant, executed by firing squad, Pretoria, 1902.

“So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth.” Sir Walter Raleigh, executed by beheading, London, 1618.

“Remember, the death penalty is murder.” Robert Drew, killed by lethal injection, Texas, 1994.

Picture: Getty Images Former Hungarian Ambassador to Berlin, Doeme Sztojay, facing the firing squad in Hungary, September 6 1946. He was executed for forming Hungary’s first ‘Quisling’ Government.