Bill to bring back firing squad approved by House

BOISE — The Idaho House voted 50-15 with five members absent Friday afternoon to pass legislation allowing the use of a firing squad as an alternative method of execution.

Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, sponsored the legislation, which he said would allow the state to carry out the death penalty as it has been unable to obtain the chemicals needed to create the lethal injection.

Last year, the Legislature brought forward a bill to allow pharmaceutical companies that provided the needed chemicals to stay anonymous, but that didn’t solve the problem, Skaug said.

And when they are obtained, they have a shelf life of about 45 days, he said, so Idaho can’t stockpile them once they are in possession.

“We don’t see in the foreseeable future that we’re ever going to get the drugs that are needed,” Skaug told the Idaho Press in an interview.

Assistant House Minority Leader Lauren Necochea, D-Boise, had concerns that using firing squads violated the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

Necochea said she saw a “gruesome” scene of what the aftermath of a firing squad looks like, and couldn’t imagine being the staff tasked with cleaning it up.

Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, said she also received the photos of the aftermath of a firing squad and struggled with whether she should share them with the other members.

“I ultimately could not bring myself to distribute those pictures, because they were so horrifying,” Rubel said.

She said the problem in obtaining the lethal injection should be solved instead of going back to the firing squad.

Skaug said the U.S. Supreme Court has never found use of the firing squad as unconstitutional. He also noted that Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a 2016 dissent, said that while she’s not a proponent of the death penalty, she thought the firing squad was probably the most viable “known and available alternative.”

“The firing squad, in my opinion, is humane in part because it is certain,” Skaug said.

He has previously highlighted that sometimes the lethal injection gets botched. A December 2022 Death Penalty Information Center report found that more than a third of lethal injection attempts were botched.

Rep. David Cannon, R-Blackfoot, said he was concerned the state would need to build facilities to carry out firing squad executions and never use them.

Idaho legally allowed firing squads from 1982 to 2009 but never used the method in that time, Idaho Reports previously reported.

Skaug told the Idaho Press that many of the people who had supported the removal of the firing squad as an option in 2009 are now supporting it, because there’s no other way to carry out the death sentence.

“It was a heavy bill for people to carry, just to vote on it, because it’s a heavy subject, and I understand that,” he said. “It’s just the justice that our system has set up for first-degree murderers in certain cases, and we need to carry it out.”

Sen. Doug Ricks, R-Rexburg, will sponsor the bill in the Senate.

Skaug also noted that the response he’s received to sponsoring the bill has spanned from people calling him a “murderer” to someone volunteering to join the firing squad.

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.

How local lawmakers voted

Yes — Dale Hawkins, R-Fernwood; Lori McCann, R-Lewiston; Brandon Mitchell, R-Moscow; Charlie Shepherd, R-Pollock.

Absent — Mike Kingsley (substitute Dan Crawford), R-Lewiston.