South Carolina’s law is on hold pending a legal challenge, but Idaho’s bill passed through its state legislature without issue earlier this week and was signed by Republican governor Brad Little.<\/p>\n
Mr Little said: “While I am signing this bill, it is important to point out that fulfilling justice can and must be done by minimising stress on corrections personnel.<\/p>\n
“For the people on death row, a jury convicted them of their crimes, and they were lawfully sentenced to death.”<\/p>\n
But senator Dan Foreman, also a Republican, called firing-squad executions “beneath the dignity of the state”.<\/p>\n
They would traumatise the executioners, witnesses, and the staff who clean up afterward, he said.<\/p>\n
And the state’s prisons department director, Jeff Tewalt, said he would be reluctant to ask workers to participate.<\/p>\n
The department also estimates it will cost $750,000 (\u00a3613,000) to build or retrofit a death chamber.<\/p>\n
How Does Death By Firing Squad Work?<\/h4>\n
Death by firing squad has been an option in Utah since it was brought back in the state in 2015.<\/p>\n
The prisoner is seated in a chair that is set up in front of a wood panel and in between stacked sandbags that keep the bullets from ricocheting around the room.<\/p>\n
A target is pinned over the inmate’s heart. Shooters aim for the chest rather than the head because it’s a bigger target and usually allows for a faster death.<\/p>\n
Five shooters set up about 25 feet (8 meters) from the chair, with their .30-caliber Winchester rifles pointing through slots in a wall. Assuming they hit their target, the heart ruptures and the prisoner dies quickly from blood loss.<\/p>\n
The gunmen are chosen from a pool of volunteer officers, with priority given to those from the area where the crime happened.<\/p>\n
The shooters’ identities are kept anonymous, and one of their rifles is loaded with a blank round so nobody knows which officer killed the inmate.<\/p>\n
In 2010, Ronnie Lee Gardner was declared dead two minutes after he was shot at Utah State Prison. He was the last person killed by firing squad in the US.<\/p>\n
Electric chairs and nitrogen gas<\/strong><\/h4>\nWhile federal executions have been put on hold since 2021, under orders of President\u00a0Joe Biden<\/strong><\/a>‘s attorney general, individual states can carry them out.<\/p>\nThe issue with drug supplies has seen some states consider non-firing squad methods.<\/p>\n
This includes refurbishing electric chairs,\u00a0despite a judge ruling last year that they constitute torture<\/strong><\/a>, while\u00a0Alabama<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0has built an as yet untried system\u00a0for executing people using nitrogen gas to induce hypoxia<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\nMr Biden had pledged during his 2020 election campaign to work towards ending the death penalty nationwide, but hasn’t pressed the issue since becoming president.<\/p>\n
Read more:<\/strong>
\nGeorgia death row inmate allowed to ask for firing squad instead of lethal injection<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Source: \u00a0![\"Sky](\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/sky-news-logo-1.png\")
<\/a> news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Idaho will allow prisoners on death row to be executed by firing squad due to a US nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs. Dwindling supplies of the substances needed have increasingly seen pharmaceutical companies ban […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3],"tags":[1679,9,3493,7018],"class_list":{"0":"post-24954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-capital-punishment","11":"tag-execution","12":"tag-firing-squad","13":"tag-idaho","14":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24954"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24957,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24954\/revisions\/24957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The issue with drug supplies has seen some states consider non-firing squad methods.<\/p>\n
This includes refurbishing electric chairs,\u00a0despite a judge ruling last year that they constitute torture<\/strong><\/a>, while\u00a0Alabama<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0has built an as yet untried system\u00a0for executing people using nitrogen gas to induce hypoxia<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr Biden had pledged during his 2020 election campaign to work towards ending the death penalty nationwide, but hasn’t pressed the issue since becoming president.<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong> <\/p>\n Source: \u00a0
\nGeorgia death row inmate allowed to ask for firing squad instead of lethal injection<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/a> news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"