Firing squad executions will be a reality again in this US state (and where else it’s allowed)

a state of USA he is ready to authorize the shooting of those sentenced to death when the lethal injection is not available.

The law was approved Monday by the Senate Idaho by 24 votes in favor and 11 against. Now it must be ratified by the republican governor Brad Little for its entry into force.

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The governor has already expressed his support for the death penaltybut generally does not comment on legislation before signing or vetoing it, notes the AP agency.

If finally the rubric, firing squads will be used in Idaho only if the state cannot obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections.

various states of USA that apply the death penalty have serious difficulties in obtaining the substances necessary for a lethal injectiondue to the opposition of pharmaceutical laboratories that do not want to be associated with capital punishment, reports the AFP agency.

The laws of the state of Idaho already allowed the option of execution by firing squad but never been used.

That option was removed from the law in 2009, after the Supreme Court upheld the legality of a method of lethal injectionwhich was commonly used at the time.

The execution chamber at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in this Oct. 20, 2011 photo. (AP Photo/Jessie L. Bonner, File)

The promoter of the return to shootingthe Republican legislator bruce skaug, told the Idaho News that the approved law “is important for the victims, those killed, for their families and for the rule of law.”

Skaug maintained that in the history of the United States there were 144 executions by firing squads. “It’s safe and it’s fast,” he said.

While for Democratic Senator Melissa Wintrow the method is “barbaric”in addition to not being a practice that “reflects the containment that we must have as a state.”

Skaug said he pushed through the law because of the state’s inability to execute Gerald Pizzuto Jr. at the end of last year. Pizzuto, who now has terminal cancer and other illnesses, has spent more than three decades on death row for his role in the murders of two gold prospectors in 1985, Univisión reported.

For now, the Department of Correction of Idaho estimates that it will cost about $750,000 to build or modernize a death chamber for executions by firing squads.

In the United States, only Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma, and South Carolina currently have laws that allow firing squads if no other methods of execution are available, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The South Carolina law is on hold pending the outcome of a challenge.

Since 1976, two men and one woman have been executed by a firing squad. The last time happened in 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner died in the state of Utah.

The civil rights organization ACLU rates the shooting as a “ghastly” and “archaic” method of execution. It adds that people who die in this way “in all likelihood suffer extreme levels of pain and torture.”

The AP agency recalls that in the absence of lethal injectionssome states began to renew the electric chairs as an alternative to executions.

A March 2019 photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the electric chair.

Others have turned to untested execution methods. For example, Nebraska executed Carey Dean Moore with a never-before-tested drug combination that included the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.

The lethal cocktail he received Moore Was composed of potassium chloride (to stop your heart), cisatracurium (a neuromuscular blocker), diazepam (a sedative) and fentanyl (an opiate that would help knock you unconscious).

While Alabama has devised a method of executing people called nitrogen Hypoxia, deprives the body of oxygen.

Telemundo explained that the Nitrogen makes up 78% of the air inhaled by humans and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen. But if the composition of the air is changed so that it is composed only of nitrogenthe inmate will pass out and will die from lack of oxygen.

In addition, during the last months of the administration of former President Donald Trump there were 13 executions. The federal government chose to use only the sedative pentobarbital for executions by lethal injection. He also issued a protocol allowing for shootings for federal executions if necessary.

It should be noted that the protocols used for the execution by lethal injection They usually contemplate the consecutive administration of three drugs: sodium thiopental, in order to induce anesthesia; then pancuronium bromide, which causes paralysis of the muscles of the respiratory system; and finally potassium chloride, which results in cardiac arrest.

The death penalty in the United States. (AFP).

Some attorneys for federal inmates who were executed with only pentobarbital argued in court that the firing squads they would actually be faster and cause less pain than lethal injection, which they say causes a sensation similar to drowning, the AP agency explained.

However, at a 2019 hearing, US lawyers quoted an expert as saying that someone shot by a firing squad can remain conscious for 10 seconds and that it is “very painful, especially related to broken bones and spinal cord damage.” spinal”.

Source: Elcomercio