Idaho Inches Closer to Approving Firing Squad Executions

A bill that would allow firing squads to carry out the death penalty in the state of Idaho is heading to Governor Brad Little's desk after the state Senate passed the measure with a veto-proof majority.

House Bill 186 was approved in a 24-11 vote Monday and would permit a firing squad as a substitute method if the state fails to obtain the required drugs to carry out lethal injection. According to the Idaho Statesman, State Representative Bruce Skaug and State Senator Doug Ricks, both of the GOP, cosponsored the bill, with drafting assistance from Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, a fellow Republican.

The bill states that the director of the Idaho Department of Correction must certify availability of lethal injection within five days of the issuance of a death warrant. If the director fails to do so or indicates that the lethal drug is not obtainable, the inmate would be executed by firing squad.

The method of capital punishment was written into Idaho law from 1982 to 2009, but was never used.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, only four states—Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina—allow a firing squad if other forms of execution are unavailable. The Associated Press (AP) reported that South Carolina's bill is on hold, pending a lawsuit challenging the method.

AP also wrote that while Little, a Republican, has previously been in favor of the death penalty in his state, the governor has not specifically commented on HB 186. Senator Ricks said on Monday that he thinks death by firing squad is a "humane" way to carry out executions.

"This is a rule of law issue—our criminal system should work and penalties should be exacted," Ricks said, according to AP.

Newsweek has reached out to Little's office via email for comment.

The bill was prompted after Idaho was unable to carry out the execution of Gerald Pizzuto Jr., 67, in the fall, who has been on death row for over three decades for his role in the killings of two gold prospectors in 1985. Pizzuto was scheduled to be executed March 23, but a federal judge granted a stay after the state failed, for a second time, to obtain the necessary lethal drugs for injection. Pizzuto has late-stage bladder cancer and is among eight convicts on Idaho's death row.

Skaug mentioned Pizzuto's case when introducing the bill last month, telling the state's House Ways and Means committee, "The way it stands now, they may never get those materials for the lethal injections."

State Senator Dan Foreman pushed back on the bill from the Senate floor Monday, reported the Statesman, saying that execution by firing squad would be "brutal" for anyone involved.

"I've seen the aftermath of shootings, and it's psychologically damaging to anybody who witnesses it. It's, in a word, 'brutal,'" Foreman, a Republican, said. "And the use of the firing squad, in my opinion, is beneath the dignity of the state of Idaho. We have to find a better way."

Idaho Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt also previously said he would be reluctant to ask his staff to participate in a firing squad, wrote AP.

"I don't feel, as the director of the Idaho Department of Correction, the compulsion to ask my staff to do that," Tewalt said.