Utah votes to become only state to allow firing squad

SALT LAKE CITY – Lawmakers have passed a bill that would make Utah the only state to allow firing squads for carrying out a death penalty if there is a shortage of execution drugs.

The passage of the bill Tuesday by the state Senate comes as states struggle to obtain lethal injection drugs amid a nationwide shortage.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Paul Ray of Clearfield, touted the measure as being a more humane form of execution. Ray argued that a team of trained marksmen is faster and more humane than the drawn-out deaths that have occurred in botched lethal injections.

The bill gives Utah options, he said.

“We would love to get the lethal injection worked out so we can continue with that but if not, now we have a backup plan,” Ray told the Associated Press.

Opponents, however, said firing squads are a cruel holdover from the state’s wild West days and will earn the state international condemnation.

“I think Utah took a giant step backward,” said Ralph Dellapiana, director of Utahns for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. He called firing squads “a relic of a more barbaric past.”

Dellapiana said the legislature should be discussing whether, not how, to execute citizens.

Whether Ray’s proposal will become law in the conservative Western state is unclear: Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, won’t say if he’ll sign the measure. His spokesman, Marty Carpenter, did issue a statement this week acknowledging that the method would give Utah a legitimate backup method if execution drugs are unavailable.

Utah’s last execution was by a firing squad in 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by five police officers with .30-caliber Winchester rifles. The state has carried out three executions by firing squad since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

The first U.S. inmate executed after that ruling was Gary Gilmore, who was killed by firing squad in early 1977.