SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A hotly contested proposal that resurrects Utah’s use of firing squads to carry out executions narrowly passed a key vote Friday in the state’s Legislature after three missing lawmakers were summoned to break a tie vote.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 39-34 Friday morning to approve the measure, sending it to an uncertain fate in the state’s GOP-controlled Senate. Leaders in that chamber have thus far declined to say if they’ll support it, and Utah’s Republican Gov. Gary Herbert won’t say if he’ll sign it.
Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, a Republican from Sandy, again declined to tell reporters on Friday if he’d support it.
Rep. Paul Ray, a Republican from Clearfield who is sponsoring the measure, said after the vote Friday that he thinks it will be just as close in the Senate, and he hasn’t started trying to press his case in that chamber.
Lawmakers in House of Representatives initially voted 35-35 on the proposal Friday morning. But Ray asked for three missing lawmakers to be summoned to the floor, where they all voted in favor.
During that time, Riverton Republican Rep. Dan McCay switched to vote in favor, allowing the measure to pass 39-34. When asked later by The Associated Press about the switch, McCay smiled and walked away without commenting.
Ray argues that a team of trained marksmen is faster and more humane than the drawn-out deaths that have occurred in botched lethal injections. His bill would call for a firing squad if Utah cannot get lethal injection drugs 30 days before an execution.
Critics say the firing squad is a gruesome relic of Utah’s Wild West past and would bring international condemnation upon the state. That criticism and excessive media attention was one of the reasons many lawmakers voted in 2004 to stop allowing condemned prisoners to choose death by firing squad.
A handful of inmates on Utah’s death row were sentenced before the law changed and still have the option of going before a firing squad in a few years once they have exhausted any appeals. It was last used in 2010 when Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by five police officers with .30-caliber Winchester rifles.
For years, states used a three-drug combination to execute inmates. But European drug makers have refused to sell the drugs to prisons and corrections departments out of opposition to the death penalty.
Drug shortages and troubles with administering lethal injections have led several states to begin revisiting alternatives during the past year
A bill to allow firing squad executions is working its way through Wyoming’s Legislature, while lawmakers in Oklahoma are considering legislation that would allow that state to use nitrogen gas to execute inmates.
Ray has argued the firing squad is the fastest, most reliable method and the most humane way to kill someone.
The Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment, says that a firing squad is not a foolproof method because the inmate could move or shooters could miss the heart, causing a slower, more painful death. One such case appears to have happened in Utah’s territorial days back in 1879, when a firing squad missed Wallace Wilkerson’s heart and it took him 27 minutes to die, according to newspaper accounts.
Several opponents of the firing squad bill and the death penalty in general said they were disappointed by Friday’s vote but encouraged that it passed on such a slim margin.
“The fact that it was so close in our state is really exciting,” said Anna Brower with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah. “I think there are legislators who, while they may have complicated feelings about the death penalty, understand that this particular method is not good advertising for Utah.”
___
Associated Press writer Kelly Catalfamo contributed to this report.
___
Follow Michelle L. Price at https://twitter.com/michellelprice
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
PHOTO: This June 18, 2010, file photo shows the firing squad execution chamber at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah.
Or hey, why don’t we just strap them down, tie a sufficiently sized explosive to their forehead and then instantaneously blow their head into a fine red mist? Nobody could claim they felt pain or suffering from that, right?
Oh, wait…that’s right…we’re supposed to be trying to preserve our humanity…
Edit: Isn’t that the joke though? Is the whole “no suffering, cruelty, pain, etc.” shtick for the condemned or for us? Whose humanity are we protecting, if anyone’s? A killing is a killing. He’s not going to give a fuck about ANYTHING in several seconds, so who are we really protecting? Perhaps the answer actually is to make it as brutal and disgusting and borderline unbearable to CARRY OUT as we possibly can, because then nobody would want to go through with it unless they were absolutely fucking sure and nobody would be able to comfort themselves that it’s antiseptic and sterilized and not a black mark on their very soul. “Oh, it’s just like he went to sleep and didn’t wake up.” Well, no wonder people don’t even take it seriously or consider it horrifying that SO many mistakes have been made leading to the death of people whose innocence is proven posthumously.
How about this: The state or country should not be killing its inhabitants. Life in prison should suffice.
If you just gotta kill someone, because a life sentence is just too slow and not revengeful enough, then death by guillotine is the quickest, surest way to go. It works the first time, every time; the condemned feels no pain after the spinal cord is severed; and the brain loses consciousness in 15 seconds or less because its blood supply isn’t replenished.
For the record, I am opposed to capital punishment.
Gary Gilmore would be proud.
Barbaric. Parts of this country have become so sick, dysfunctional and back-assward.
Why not a bullet to the brain then? The brain controls the heart. Killing someone by gunshot who themselves may have killed someone by gunshot. Makes no fucking sense. This is just so wrong. Besides, it costs more to keep someone on death row than to keep someone locked up with a sentence of life imprisonment because of the appeals process. And states that have the death penalty have higher murder rates.
I’m against it on moral grounds. Too many have been found later to be innocent after execution. Even if one person was found innocent in my mind, that’s one too many, because you can’t bring back DEAD. And I don’t want anyone killing in my name as a citizen of a State that allows it.
Michigan, where I live, was the first territory in the country and the english-speaking world to come out against capital punishment in 1837. Our state always prided itself on this fact. It’s written into our Constitution and has been since 1847. There have been federal executions in the State but the last one occurred here in 1938. A hanging took place then, apparently for a bank robber.
Guess who wants to change Michigan’s capital punishment law? You’ll be surprised to learn its a fucking Democrat, Senator Virgil Smith from Detroit, who has the backing of two top Republicans. They are currently pushing for this in the State legislature. Smith wants to make it legal to execute a person if you kill a cop in the State. Takes all kinds of misguided foolish politicians these days. I sincerely hope his bill in Michigan does not see the light of day.