Utah to use firing squads if drugs not available
Utah has become the only US state to resume “gruesome” firing squads to settle on a back up execution method when lethal drugs are not available.
Describing the method “a little bit gruesome,'' Utah Republican Governor Gary Herbert signed the measure into law on Monday.
He said since Utah is a capital punishment state, it needs a backup execution method in case a shortage of lethal drugs persists.
The state, however, keeps lethal injection as the primary method of execution.
Herbert spokesman Marty Carpenter said that “we prefer to use our primary method of lethal injection when [a death] sentence is issued."
Opponents of using firing squad say the practice is a cruel holdover from Utah’s Wild West days.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Utah said the bill makes the state "look backward and backwoods."
Carpenter, however, said, "Those who voiced opposition to this bill are primarily arguing against capital punishment in general and that decision has already been made in our state."
Because of the intense media attention, Utah lawmakers stopped offering inmates the choice of a death by firing squad several years ago.
But amongst several other states, it began to seek out new forms of capital punishment after some tragic events occurred last year in the process of execution of inmates by the use of lethal drugs in Oklahoma and Arizona.
In Oklahoma, Clayton Lockett died in agony 43 minutes after receiving the first part of a lethal cocktail used for the execution.
In another case in Arizona, it took almost two hours for the condemned man to die after he received the lethal injection.
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