Firing squads could become Idaho’s primary execution method under a bill headed to the governor’s desk this week.
The Idaho senate passed the bill on Wednesday, and if signed by governor Brad Little, it will take effect next year.
Currently, the firing squad serves as Idaho’s backup execution method if state corrections officials are unable to obtain the necessary drugs for lethal injection.
Representative Doug Ricks, the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation was prompted by Idaho’s failed attempt to execute Thomas Eugene Creech last year when the execution team was unable to find a suitable vein for an IV line. Ricks said that shooting was a more effective and humane method, and he suggested that the state could use a machine or “electronic triggering methods” to eliminate the need for human volunteers to pull the triggers.
“One thing about this method, it’s pretty sure,” Ricks said during a hearing on the bill last month. “It’s not going to be something that gets done partway.”
If passed into law, the bill would take effect on 1 July 2026.
Four other states – Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah – allow firing squads in certain circumstances, though the method has been rarely used in recent years. South Carolina is set to carry out the first US execution by firing squad in 15 years with the scheduled execution of Brad Sigmon on Friday.
The Federal Defender Services of Idaho, which represents many of the people on the Idaho’s death row, declined to comment on the bill.
Idaho department of correction officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The prison recently remodeled its lethal injection chamber to include a space where execution teams can use more invasive methods to insert an IV line near the heart if they cannot successfully place one in the arms or legs.
Republican senator Daniel Foreman, a retired police officer and former air force veteran who served in combat, was the only Republican to debate against the bill on Wednesday. He said he had seen shooting deaths, and that they are “anything but humane”.
“The consequences of a botched firing execution are more graphic, more mentally, psychologically devastating” than other botched execution methods, Foreman said.
But Republican senator Brian Lenney said lawmakers should remember why capital punishment is imposed.
“If we’re talking about terror, and we’re talking about barbaric, I think we should remember why this man is on death row in the first place,” he said, describing some of the criminal charges against Creech.
In the US, 144 prisoner executions have been carried out by firing squads, according to a 2016 law review article. Since the death penalty became reinstated in the 1970s, Utah is the only state to have executed people by firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
