Utah lawmakers vote to bring back execution by firing squad

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/11/utah-passes-firing-squad-bill

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Utah lawmakers voted on Tuesday to resurrect the firing squad as an alternative method of executing condemned inmates in the event the state runs out of lethal injection drugs.Faced with a nationwide scarcity ofexecution drugs, the Utah senate on Tuesday approved legislation that would allow the state to resume using the firing squad more than a decade after halting the practice.

It is unclear yet if the governor, Republican Gary Herbert, intends to sign the bill. His spokesman, Marty Carpenter, said in a statement that the state is “dedicated to pursuing all reasonable and legal options”to obtain the lethal drugs, while noting that if it fails to do so, the proposal provides a back up plan.

Under the bill, the state is allowed to use a firing squadif the drugs are unavailable 30 days before an execution is scheduled to take place. “We are facing a situation where we are going to have to go to court, and it’s going to cost millions of dollars for the state of Utah to defend what we’re doing,” the bill’s sponsor, state representative Paul Ray, said in defense of the measure during the earlier debate in the House. Critics, however, say the method is archaic and barbaric.The Republican-controlled Senate voted 18-10 to pass the billon Tuesday with almost no debate. Last month, the Republican-controlled House narrowly passed the bill after a lengthy discussion, that quickly evolved into a debate on whether the death penalty should exist at all. Utah is one of a handful of states seeking alternate execution methods, as states’ supplies of the execution drugs dry up, the result of a European boycott. It also follows arecent decision by the Supreme Court to review the controversial experimental drug concoction used by Oklahoma, months after the state’s botched execution of convicted killer Clayton Lockett, 38, in 2014.

This year, lawmakers in Arkansas area considering a proposal to allow the firing squad, and in Oklahoma, lawmakers there are debating a bill that would allow nitrogen case as an alternative to lethal injections.

The firing squad is an outdated form of execution in the US, rarely used as a form of punishment in the US since the Civil War era. Though the last execution by firing squad was carried out just five years ago, in Utah.

In 2010, death row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner put to death by a firing squad because he chose this method before the state eliminated the practice in 2004. On his execution day, five anonymous marksmen took aim at a target pinned over his heart and fired. One of the guns was loaded with blanks, so no one would know who fired the fatal shot.