Utah Legislature Approves Execution By Firing Squad
SALT LAKE CITY, March 10, 2015 (Gephardt Daily)
The Utah state Senate approved a measure Tuesday night approving execution by firing squads in cases where the drugs used in lethal injections are unavailable.
The Senate passed the bill by a margin of 18 to 10. It now heads to Governor Gary Hebert (R) who has not said if he’ll sign the bill into law.
The bill, which passed through the state’s House of Representatives in February, allows firing squads to be used in instances where lethal injection drugs cannot be procured 30 days prior to the scheduled execution.
If signed into law, Utah will be the only state in the U.S. to permit the use of firing squads. The state banned firing squads in 2004 in favor of lethal injection, but inmates convicted of capital offenses prior to that could still choose to be shot to death.
Three Utah inmates have been killed by firing squads since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore was executed at Point of the Mountain in January 1977. At the time, he was the first inmate to be executed in the U.S. in more than a decade. In 1996, John Albert Taylor died by firing squad after being convicted in the death of an 11 year-old Washington Terrace girl. Inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner was the last man put to death by a Utah firing squad. Gardner was executed in 2010.
