‘An act of mercy’: Firing squad execution clears Idaho Legislature, on way to governor

A year ago, the state of Idaho failed to execute a prisoner for the very first time. Senate lawmakers responded at the Capitol on Wednesday by using their heavy Republican majority to pass a change in law to sideline lethal injections in favor of death by firing squad.

The bill now goes to Gov. Brad Little for his consideration.

The Republican has been leery of the more visually violent execution method. Two years ago, he enshrined a law to make a firing squad the state’s backup method, while stating his continued preference for lethal injection. The new bill has already passed the House, and Idaho would become the only U.S. state with a firing squad as its lead execution method if Little decides to sign it.

In February 2024, the state’s execution team, a group of volunteers who remain anonymous under a different Idaho law, couldn’t find a vein suitable for an IV in a septuagenarian prisoner. Death row prisoner Thomas Creech, convicted of five murders and suspected of several more, has noted health issues after a half-century in prison. A stay of execution remains in place for Creech, now 74, while he awaits a federal court ruling whether a second attempt to put him to death would represent cruel and unusual punishment.

In the meantime, state lawmakers, led by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, resolved it is time to execute prisoners by gunshot. Sen. Doug Ricks, R-Rexburg, the bill’s co-sponsor, referenced a need for the change in efforts to overcome prisoner appeals from lethal injection that delay the execution process, and past difficulties obtaining the chemicals needed for the method because pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell them to prisons for that purpose.

Ricks also labeled shooting prisoners to death “more humane.”

“Senators, I view the firing squad as a more humane way to carry out executions for those on death row, because it is quick and certain, it brings justice for the victims and their families in a more expeditious manner,” Ricks said on the Senate floor Wednesday.

Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, twice stood to convey her opposition to the bill.

“I think this is a move backward,” she told fellow lawmakers. “It’s barbaric, and it unfortunately puts the optics of Idaho in a place that I don’t think we care to be.”

Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Viola, a military combat veteran and retired police officer, joined her in voting against the bill. He acknowledged the challenges of finding lethal injection drugs, but condemned the firing squad as Idaho’s preferred execution method, which he called “anything but humane.”

“The state of Idaho is on the verge of making a big mistake – a very big mistake,” Foreman said. “I can say that, because I’ve seen it. I wished I hadn’t seen it. … The consequences of a botched firing squad execution are more graphic, more mentally, psychologically devastating than any botched attempt with a lethal drug.”

Steve Goncalves, father of University of Idaho student homicide victim Kaylee Goncalves, has announced his family’s support for the Skaug-Ricks proposal. Prosecutors in the high-profile case intend to seek the death penalty for suspect Bryan Kohberger, charged with four counts of murder, if he is convicted at his trial scheduled to start this summer in Boise.

“You don’t know until you go through it, man. This is real and it’s ugly,” Steve Goncalves said last month in an interview on NewsNation’s Banfield. “I’ll be that person to stand in front of the camera and drum up some support.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, Idahoans Against the Death Penalty and the Idaho chapter of the gun violence nonprofit Survivors Empowered formally opposed the firing squad bill. It otherwise received limited opposition at public hearings and passed the Statehouse with enough votes to override Little’s veto authority, should he choose to stand in the law’s way. None of the Legislature’s 15 Democrats voted in favor of the bill.

The legal nonprofit Federal Defender Services of Idaho, which represents several of the state’s nine prisoners on death row, including Creech, declined an Idaho Statesman request for comment Wednesday.

‘Think twice,’ state prisons director previously asked

Last year, in response to the failed execution attempt of Creech, the Idaho Department of Correction rolled out a revised lethal injection policy to limit the chance at a repeat incident. Instead of only a peripheral IV, a heightened procedure called a central line that includes a catheter is now in place if needed.

It is unclear how Josh Tewalt, director of the state prison system – and the person tasked with overseeing its executions – feels about the proposed firing squad law. Through agency spokesperson Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic, he declined a request from the Statesman for an interview or to answer questions by email until after Little takes action on the bill.

But in March 2022, in testimony before a Senate committee, Tewalt requested that lawmakers closely consider the effect that another possible execution method may have on prison staff if implemented.

“I would strongly encourage this body to think twice,” he said. “When we start looking at whether or not it’s appropriate to authorize other methods of execution on behalf of the people of Idaho, I would just ask that we also consider the potential impacts on the people who would have to carry that out.”

IDOC has yet to finalize its firing squad procedures, Kuzeta-Cerimagic told the Statesman in a prior email, but officials are “considering the use of a remote-operated weapons system alongside traditional firing squad methods.”

South Carolina is scheduled to execute a prisoner by firing squad on Friday – the first in the U.S. in nearly 15 years. Under that state’s law, prisoners choose between a firing squad, lethal injection and the electric chair, according to the State newspaper in South Carolina.

Utah is the most recent U.S. state to use a firing squad in an execution in 2010. At the time, Idaho’s neighbor also allowed prisoners to choose their method of execution. Utah also is the only U.S. state to execute a prisoner by firing squad since 1976, doing so three times, according to the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no formal position on capital punishment.

Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma are the other three capital punishment states with a firing squad currently on the books. But none has the use of guns as its primary option.

Last week, Little said that he had yet to review the bill, but recently spoke with Utah’s governor about the more controversial execution method.

“I’d have to look at it,” Little told reporters at a press conference. “I mean, it’s always an issue: What does it do to your staff? What does it cost? What’s the efficiency of it?”

Idaho’s execution chamber has yet to be rebuilt to accommodate a firing squad after passage of the 2023 law. Upgrades to do so at the state’s maximum security prison south of Boise could take about six months, Ricks said. The estimated cost is upward of $1 million, according to prison officials.

On Wednesday during debate of the bill, Sen. Brian Lenney, R-Nampa, invoked Creech’s name while issuing his support for the change to law. He backed assertions that shooting prisoners results in an instantaneous death.

“If we want to talk about barbaric of visions of terror, I think we should remember who the death penalty is typically reserved for,” he said. “And, in this case, I think it’s an act of mercy.”

Reporter Carolyn Komatsoulis contributed.