Firing squad execution clears Idaho Legislature, on way to governor

BOISE, Idaho — A year ago, the state of Idaho failed while trying 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 the governor.

Republican Gov. Brad Little 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 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 asserted on the Senate floor Wednesday.

It is unclear how Idaho Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt, who is tasked with carrying out the state’s executions, feels about the proposed law. Through a department spokesperson, he declined a request from the Idaho Statesman for an interview or to answer questions by email until after Little takes action on the bill.

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

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

Utah was the last 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 to cost is upward of $1 million, according to the state prison system.

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.”