Idaho will allow death row prisoners to be executed by firing squad due to a nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs in the United States.
Dwindling supplies of the necessary substances have seen more and more pharmaceutical companies ban prisons from using them to kill inmates.
Idaho has now joined Mississippi, Utah, OklahomaAND South Carolina in allowing death by firing squad if other execution techniques are not available.
South Carolina’s law is suspended pending a legal appeal, but Idaho’s bill passed through the state legislature without issue earlier this week and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Brad Little.
Mr Little said: “As I sign this bill into law, it is important to stress that the fulfillment of justice can and should be done with minimum stress on prison staff.
“For people on death row, a jury convicted them of their crimes and they were legally sentenced to death.”
To know more:
An inmate on Georgia’s death row is allowed to request a firing squad instead of lethal injection
But Senator Dan Foreman, also a Republican, called the firing squad executions “below the dignity of the state.”
They would traumatize the perpetrators, witnesses and staff who he would clean up after, he said.
And state prisons department director Jeff Tewalt said he would be reluctant to ask workers to participate.
The department also estimates it will cost $750,000 (£613,000) to build or refurbish a death chamber.
Electric chairs and nitrogen gas
While federal executions have been suspended since 2021, by order of the president Joe BidenAttorney General, individual states can execute them.
The problem with drug supplies has seen some states consider non-firing methods.
This includes the refurbishment of electric chairs, despite a judge ruling last year that they constitute tortureWhile Alabama he built a still unexplored system for running people who use nitrogen gas to induce hypoxia.
Mr. Biden pledged during his 2020 election campaign to work to end the death penalty nationwide, but he hasn’t pressed the issue since he became president.
