Idaho governor signs legislation allowing firing squad executions



Idaho's Governor Brad Little (R) signed legislation Friday allowing execution by firing squad beginning July 1.

"The families of the victims deserve justice for their loved ones and the death penalty is a way to bring them peace," said Gov. Little in a transmittal letter to Idaho's Speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Moyle (R).

"Fulfilling justice can and must be done while minimizing stress on corrections personnel ... For the people on death row, a jury convicted them of their crimes, and they were lawfully sentenced to death."

Idaho's House Bill 186 calls for the director of the Idaho Department of Corrections to determine within five days of a death warrant being issued whether lethal injection is available. available. If lethal injection is available, lethal injection will be used as the method of execution. If the director does not so certify, fails to file the certification, or determines lethal injection is not available, the method of execution shall be firing squad.

In addition, the bill says if a court finds lethal injection to be unconstitutional, the method of execution shall be firing squad.

The legislation applies to all executions carried out on or after July 1.

Pharmaceuticals used to carry out executions by lethal injection have become more challenging to acquire due in part to pharmaceutical companies barring the use of their drugs for that purpose, the Associated Press reported.

The Idaho Department of Corrections estimates the cost to retrofit a death chamber for firing squad executions at about $750,000, CBS News reported.

Idaho became the fifth state to permit execution by firing squad when Gov. Little signed HB 186. Other states allowing the method include Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. South Carolina's law, however, is currently being challenged in court, AP also reported.

Ronnie Gardner, the most recent person to be executed by firing squad in June 2010, chose the method himself, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

How are executions via firing squad carried out?

TheBlaze cautions readers that the following section contains graphic descriptions of death via firing squad.

The death row inmate sentenced to execution by firing squad is typically first bound to a chair with leather straps across his or her waist and head, DPIC explains. Sandbags surrounding the chair are meant to absorb the blood. The chair is positioned in front of a canvas wall.

A black cloth is pulled over the prisoner's head. A doctor pins a cloth over the target, the prisoner's heart.

A number of shooters either 3 or 5, depending on the state, stand in an enclosure about 20 feet away. Each shooter has a .30 caliber rifle with single rounds. One of the shooters is given blank rounds. In South Carolina, each shooter's rounds are live.

Each shooter aims his or her rifle through a slot in the canvas wall and fires. If the shooter(s) miss the prisoner's heart, the prisoner slowly bleeds to death.

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South Carolina judge says firing squad, electric chair violate state constitution



A judge in South Carolina has ruled that two execution methods recently made available to death row inmates violate the prohibition against cruel, unusual, and corporal punishment codified in the state constitution.

On Tuesday evening, Judge Jocelyn Newman ruled that the firing squad and electric chair, two traditional means of execution which have fallen out of public favor in recent decades, could inflict severe pain and perhaps even a prolonged death, both of which could be considered "corporal" punishment.

As used in the state constitution, "corporal" refers not only to the body itself but to "mutilation of the body," Newman wrote in her ruling. This added protection against corporal punishment, she continued, offers "greater protections than those found in the Constitution of the United States," which bars only cruel and unusual punishment.

Last month, Newman presided over a lawsuit presented on behalf of four death row inmates in South Carolina — Brad Sigmon, Freddie Eugene Owens, Richard Moore, and Gary Dubose Terry — whose execution dates were looming and who were forced by the state to choose between the firing squad and electric chair since the drugs necessary for lethal injection have not been available in the state in nearly a decade.

During the four-day trial, Newman heard testimony from various witnesses who argued that a firing squad and electrocution both cause significant pain. Dr. Jonathan Arden, formerly of the medical examiner's office in Washington, D.C., stated the those who have been shot can experience excruciating pain for up to 15 seconds before they lose consciousness.

"In order for a volley of rifle shots to enter the front of the chest and impact and destroy the heart," Arden told the court, "there's a virtual guarantee that they will not only disrupt other soft tissues, which is a source of pain, but most importantly, they will break bones."

Arden also testified that the electric chair more or less amounted to "cooking" internal organs.

Despite testimony from witnesses who argued to the contrary, Judge Newman ultimately determined that the firing squad and the electric chair were both antiquated and inhumane forms of execution, a ruling which effectively forestalls executions for the foreseeable future. The state will likely appeal the decision.

Sigmon, Owens, Moore, and Terry were all convicted of at least one murder and sentenced to death between 1997 and 2002. South Carolina is one of just four states to authorize the use of firing squad in state executions and is one of eight states to permit electrocution. The last state execution in South Carolina took place in 2011.

SC bill would make death row inmates choose: Firing squad or electric chair



In an attempt to restart executions in the state after a nearly 10-year pause, South Carolina state senators approved a measure on Tuesday that would make electrocution the state's default execution method and add another option — death by firing squad.

Though the death penalty is legal in South Carolina, the state has not carried out an execution in almost a decade due to its inability to purchase the lethal injection drugs required, CBS News reported. Death by lethal injection is currently the default method of execution in the state, so under current law, if lethal injection drugs are unavailable, inmates can temporarily be spared.

But the new measure, approved by state senators in a 32-11 vote, allows the state Department of Corrections to bypass lethal injection in carrying out executions.

According to state records, 37 inmates are currently being housed on death row, awaiting their punishment. Should the bill be signed into law, those inmates would be forced to choose between death by firing squad or electric chair if lethal injection drugs remain unavailable.

The bill must now go through another routine procedural vote in the Senate before heading to the House for consideration. South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster told CBS News in a statement that should the legislation pass in both chambers of Congress, he would "proudly" sign it into law.

The state reportedly ran out of its supply of lethal injection drugs in 2013 and has been trying to purchase more ever since, but to no avail. Pharmaceutical companies often refuse to sell the drugs when they find out what they will be used for, especially in absence of a shield law, which the state does not currently have.

"We've been trying this since 2014," South Carolina Department of Corrections director Bryan Stirling told WSPA-TV. "After a year or so I went to the legislature and told them we could not obtain the drugs to carry out an execution."

The Republican lawmakers who introduced the bill initially only intended to change the default method of execution to electrocution, but then Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlian added firing squad as an option in an amendment. It may seem strange, but some see death by firing squad as a more humane approach than the electric chair.

Here's more on the story:

SC Senate passes bill that would make electrocution primary way of execution, add firing squad youtu.be