Idaho legislature sends bill on execution by firing squad to governor’s desk
Rachel Schilke
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Idaho is one step closer to allowing execution by firing squad as an alternative death penalty sentence to lethal injection after lawmakers passed the bill with a veto-proof majority.
The firing squads will only be used in the event that the state cannot obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections. The method was legal in Idaho from 1982 to 2009.
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The bill now heads to Gov. Brad Little (R-ID)’s desk. While he typically does not comment on legislation prior to signing or vetoing it, Little has voiced support for the death penalty in the past.
Only Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have laws allowing firing squads, but South Carolina’s law is on hold after a lawsuit was filed challenging the legality of the electric chair or firing squad.
Republican state Sen. Doug Rick, who co-sponsored the bill introduced by Republican state Rep. Bruce Skaug, said the state’s difficulty in acquiring lethal injection chemicals could continue “indefinitely” and that he believes death by the firing squad is “more humane.”
2022 was dubbed the “year of the botched execution” by the Death Penalty Information Center after seven of 20 execution attempts were visibly problematic due to either executioner incompetence or protocol failures.
“This is a rule of law issue — our criminal system should work and penalties should be exacted,” Ricks said, according to the Chicago Tribune.
However, not all Republicans agreed with the firing squad option. State Sen. Dan Foreman said executions by a firing squad would inflict trauma on those who carry them out, the witnesses, and people that clean up afterward.
“I’ve seen the aftermath of shootings, and it’s psychologically damaging to anybody who witnesses it,” Foreman said. “The use of the firing squad is, in my opinion, beneath the dignity of the state of Idaho.”
The bill was prompted after the Idaho Department of Corrections had to cancel the scheduled execution of Gerald Pizzuto Jr., who was convicted for the deaths of Berta and Delbert Herndon, in November after the department could not obtain the chemicals necessary to carry out the lethal injection.
Pizzuto, who has terminal cancer and other illnesses, has spent more than three decades on death row.
If the bill is signed, firing squad executions might face some roadblocks. The department said it would cost approximately $750,000 to build or furnish a firing squad execution chamber. Director Jeff Tewalt said last year he predicted there would be several legal challenges to planned firing squad executions as there are with lethal injections.
He also does not feel comfortable asking his employees to carry out the firing squad, he said.
“I don’t feel, as the director of the Idaho Department of Correction, the compulsion to ask my staff to do that,” Tewalt said.
Kevin Kempf, executive director of the Correctional Leaders Association, said the execution process can be challenging for everyone involved, including the families of the victims, and those challenges could be amplified by firing squads.
“I’ve got to say at the same time, my thoughts go to staff members that may have to carry out something, per law, that looks like putting someone to death,” Kempf said in an interview with the Associated Press in early March. “That is nothing I would assume any correctional director would take lightly, asking someone-slash-ordering someone to do that.”
This bill made national headlines not just for Idaho’s potential to become the fifth state to allow firing squads, but also because it could mean that one of the state’s most high-profile alleged criminals, Bryan Kohberger, could face a firing squad if given the death penalty for murdering four University of Idaho students in November 2022.
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Kohberger, 28, allegedly stabbed Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Ethan Chapin, 20, and Xana Kernodle, 20, to death in their beds on Nov. 13 in their home.
Goncalves’s family has called for the death penalty in Kohberger’s case. However, family attorney Shannon Gray said the decision would be “made by all the families” on whether or not the death penalty is pursued.