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Idaho to let prisoners on death row be executed by firing squad if no lethal injections available | US News



Idaho will allow death row inmates to be executed by firing squad due to a nationwide shortage of lethal injections.

Supplies of essential substances are dwindling, leading pharmaceutical companies to increasingly ban prisons from using them to kill prisoners.

Idaho is now participating Mississippi, Wyoming, Oklahoma StateAnd South Carolina in allowing execution by firing squad if no other execution techniques were available.

South Carolina’s law is stalling pending a legal challenge, but the Idaho bill passed the state legislature without issue earlier this week and was signed by the party’s governor. Brad Little Republic.

Mr Little said: “As I signed this bill, it was important to point out that the administration of justice can and must be done by minimizing stress on correctional staff.

“For those sentenced to death, a jury convicted them of their crimes and they were legally sentenced to death.”

Read more:
Georgia death row inmates are allowed to request shooting instead of lethal injection

But Senator Dan Foreman, also a Republican, called the executions “under the dignity of the state”.

They would wound the executioners, witnesses and cleaning staff afterwards, he said.

And the state’s prison department director, Jeff Tewalt, said he would be reluctant to ask workers to participate.

The department also estimates it will cost $750,000 (£613,000) to build or retrofit a death chamber.

Electric seat and nitrogen gas

While federal executions have been suspended from 2021, by order of the President Joe Bidenof the attorney general, individual states can implement them.

The drug supply problem has led some states to consider non-shooting methods.

This includes refurbishing electric seats, although a judge ruled last year that they constitute torturewhile Alabama built an untested system to execute people using nitrogen gas to cause hypoxia.

Mr. Biden has pledged during his 2020 campaign to work towards ending the death penalty nationwide, but has not pushed the issue forward since becoming president.

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