Firing Squads A Step Closer As Utah Senate Committee Advances Execution Bill
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The firing squad may be making a comeback in Utah.
A state Senate committee on Monday gave preliminary approval to a measure that would allow the state to execute prisoners by firing squad if the drugs used for lethal injection are unavailable 30 days before the scheduled execution.
The controversial proposal from Clearfield Republican Rep. Paul Ray was only narrowly approved in the House after additional lawmakers were called in to break a tie vote. But in the Senate committee, only Salt Lake City Democrat Luz Escamilla voted in opposition.
The proposal now goes to the full Senate for further consideration.
Should senators approve the measure, it will go to the desk of Republican Gov. Gary Herbert. He has not said whether he would sign the bill.
Ray argues that the firing squad is a faster and more humane method of capital punishment.
"There is a need for this," said Ray, who raised concern about botched executions by lethal injection in other states. He said the law already allows for firing squads to be used should the injection method be rule unconstitutional.
Utah has only carried out three executions by firing squad since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Until 2004, prisoners could request death by firing squad, but the state has removed that option, citing excessive media attention.
One of those three executions was the 2010 death of Ronnie Lee Gardner, whose older brother spoke at Monday's hearing.
"I could've stuck all four fingers in his chest," said Randy Gardner, who examined his brother after the execution and called it cruel and unusual punishment. "I'm sure it blew his heart out his back."
Representatives from the Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, the local Catholic diocese and a state advocacy group opposed to the death penalty also spoke on Monday. They each pleaded with lawmakers to table the proposal and spend more time researching the issue.
Right now is the perfect time to do that, they said, because the only prisoner on death row scheduled to be executed in the near future was sentenced before 2004 and has already chosen the firing squad.
The committee also approved a request from Sen. Gene Davis, a Salt Lake City Democrat, to ask Senate leadership to schedule a discussion on the death penalty in general. He said he only voted in favor of Ray's proposal because the law already allows the death penalty.
The Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, says that a firing squad is not a foolproof method because the inmate could move or shooters could miss the heart, causing a slower, more painful death. One such case appears to have happened in Utah's territorial days back in 1879, when a firing squad missed Wallace Wilkerson's heart and it took him 27 minutes to die, according to newspaper accounts.
Legislation to allow firing squads has been introduced in Wyoming and Arkansas this year, while lawmakers in Oklahoma are considering legislation that would allow the state to use nitrogen gas to execute inmates.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press.
