Wyoming Lawmakers Advance Bill Allowing Executions By Firing Squad

[Judi Lynn]

Wyoming Lawmakers Advance Bill Allowing Executions By Firing Squad
by Ian Millhiser Posted on September 15, 2014 at 11:45 am Updated: September 15, 2014 at 12:15 pm

A legislative committee in Wyoming endorsed a bill that will permit the state to execute inmates by firing squad in the event that it is unable to obtain lethal injection drugs. The bill is a response to a nationwide shortage of the drugs, at least in the nation’s death chambers, as drug companies have grown unwilling to allow their drugs to be used in executions and foreign governments have prevented the drugs from being exported for that purpose.

Currently, Wyoming law provides for execution by “the administration of lethal gas” if the state’s lethal injection process is declared unconstitutional, although the state does not actually own a gas chamber. The firing squad bill, which earned the support of Wyoming’s Joint Judiciary Legislative Committee on Friday, makes two changes to the state’s law — it changes Wyoming’s fallback execution method from the gas chamber to the firing squad, and it permits firing squads to be used “if the sentencing court finds execution by lethal injection cannot be performed within the time prescribed by law,” even if no court has found lethal injections to be unconstitutional.

As lethal injection drugs have grown increasingly scarce on death row, many states have turned to less dramatic alternatives to ensure that they can still move forward with executions. Yet, while these less dramatic options may not back the emotional oomph of learning that your home state just re-legalized firing squads, they could be far more painful for inmates. A number of states, for example, have turned to “compounding pharmacies” which produce drugs of uncertain quality in order to execute inmates. As a result, poor quality drugs may be responsible for several incidents where inmates died after long periods of apparent pain. Additionally, in part because several professional organizations representing doctors and nurses outright forbid their members from assisting executions, executioners can lack the training necessary to prevent inmates from suffering as they die.

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Meanwhile, while Wyoming may be poised to switch its backup execution method from the gas chamber to the firing squad, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster (D) suggested that his state could return to the gas chamber if it is unable to kill inmates via lethal injection.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/09/15/3567366/wyoming-lawmakers-back-bill-allowing-executions-by-firing-squad/

[yurbud]

1. The firing squad is a more honest and humane form of execution

All of the forms of execution we have used the last few decades are humane only for the audience we don't see blood so it looks pain less