The Return of the Firing Squad, Explained

Idaho’s state legislature paves the way for the execution method’s return.

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A man dies by firing squad in Cuba in 1935.(Photo by KEYSTONE-FRANCE/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)

The Idaho Senate approved a bill Monday reinstating the firing squad as a backup option for executions when lethal injection drugs are unavailable.

Like South Carolina—which approved electrocution and the firing squad as options in 2021 before being stopped by a state judge last year—Idaho has never actually executed anyone by firing squad, even though it kept the option on the books as a backup until 2009. The new law still needs the signature of Gov. Brad Little to become law, but it passed the legislature with a veto-proof majority.

Although it has historically been one of the most common methods of execution in the world, in the United States the firing squad has rarely been used outside the military: An expert witness in the South Carolina case found only 34 instances nationwide since 1900.

What prompted Idaho’s legislation?

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Good. I’ve long been in favor of this. Some on death row would prefer firing squad to lethal injection.

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    Jeff Walden

    Sheesh. We put Air Force pilots through hypoxia training, mimicking what they'd feel at elevation if they lost oxygen flow. You can find videos of pilots in perfect comfort, amiable and talkative, not in any pain, yet plainly under the effects of reduced oxygen. It's really not difficult to use nitrogen hypoxia for this purpose, if for some reason we dislike the firing squad! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN3W4d-5RPo

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    Stephanie

    Excellent piece.

    The only bone I have to pick is the implication that Justice Sotomayor approves of the use of firing squad. Reading the dissent (thanks for the link!) it's clear she finds it horrifying, and her point is that the current state of executions is so much more horrible that a condemned person might well prefer a firing squad.

    She said:

    "The State plans to execute petitioners using three drugs: midazolam, rocuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. The latter two drugs are intended to paralyze the inmate and stop his heart. But they do so in a torturous manner, causing burning, searing pain.

    And:
    'Soon thereafter, Oklahoma used midazolam for the first time in its execution of Clayton Lockett. That execution did not go smoothly. Ten minutes after an intravenous (IV) line was set in Lockett’s groin area and 100 milligrams of midazolam were administered, an attending physician declared Lockett unconscious. Id., at 392–393. When the paralytic and potassium chloride were administered, however, Lockett awoke. Ibid. Various witnesses reported that Lockett began to writhe against his restraints, saying, “[t]his s*** is f***ing with my mind,” “something is wrong,” and “[t]he drugs aren’t working.” Id., at 53 (internal quotation marks omitted). State officials ordered the blinds lowered, then halted the execution. Id., at 393, 395. But 10 minutes later—approximately 40 minutes after the execution began—Lockett was pronounced dead."

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  4. Meggymish

    I find it hideously, hysterically ironic that some commenters here have such passion to protect the right to life that every *human being has...while being in favor of legalized killing, as long as said killing is classified as a medical procedure and kept politely out of sight of the general public. How about this: we don't allow the killing of ANYONE (unless an immediate threat to your life). No execution, no elective abortion. That would be a consistent position. It happens to be one I hold.

    To be fair, one can still be prolife while supporting the death penalty. Here's why: the person who is to be executed has had due process of law, has committed an act or acts that under state or federal law can be punished by the death penalty, has exhausted all appeals. The baby to be killed, on the other hand, has done nothing wrong, has come into being because his or her parents decided to have sex (which, in case nobody ever told you, is how babies are made) and in the rare cases where the baby came into being by the criminal act of his/her father, the baby still did nothing wrong. We don't execute rapists, much less their children.

    In short, criminals have had due process and have been found guilty, then had their sentence decided by another process, and their crime is heinous enough to warrant the death penalty; while babies, no matter the circumstances of their conception, are the very definition of innocence. I disagree with this position because of the number of mistakes made in death penalty cases and in general, and because we have the capacity to keep the most dangerous criminals locked up for life. "Sit there and think about what you've done" is a good way to simultaneously punish and hopefully rehabilitate a person. I'm not naive, I know that recidivism rates are very high for certain types of crimes and in certain groups of people. But I don't think execution is warranted to protect the community anymore, if judges would do their jobs.

    But my point is this: any society that so vigorously defends the right to live of convicted murderers while simultaneously defending the right of more powerful people to kill the powerless, denying their humanity to salve their conscience, is a society that has its priorities completely upside down.

    In the article, one reason cited by opponents of the death penalty is the possibility that the lethal injection process goes wrong, causing the inmate to die an agonizing death. I have a problem with the death penalty for a lot of reasons, and the potential agony of the death is one. Now apply that to abortion. Imagine what the public reaction would be to actually seeing the various procedures used to end the life of a baby in utero...performed on someone they could see. It's the equivalent of drawing and quartering. Talk about agonizing!

    Let's have some consistency, please.

    *some exceptions apparently apply

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    1. Mathias

      Thank you for making the case against abortion thoroughly and well, including the oft-reviled case of pregnancy resulting from rape. Indeed, we don't kill children for their parents' crimes.

      I am in favor of the death penalty for murderers, because the Bible states it as a basic humanitarian principle that "he who sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of G-d did He make man". It is out of respect for human life that we acknowledge that someone who breaks that code must pay with his own life. However, concerns about wrongful conviction and execution still apply, so I would be fine with making the standard of evidence sky-high for murder convictions (eyewitness testimony should be required, not circumstantial evidence).

      Let us indeed have consistency, and not just eye-blinkers to protect our sensibilities from the actual results of what we allow or endorse. Press on!

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      JDW

      I've always been in the protecting of innocent life camp. A baby in the womb is as innocent as we humans get which isn't innocent but we are most innocent there. I guess that is my summary of a previous post but it is a defensible position.

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      Wj

      This is also happening in Idaho, just as the firing squad makes a comeback: https://www.today.com/parents/pregnancy/idahos-bonner-general-hospital-closes-maternity-ward-rcna75776

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      1. Avatar photo
        Mudskipper

        If you follow some of the links in that article, apparently a state committee that reviews maternal deaths is also on the chopping block. One gets the impression is that certain people don't want to know why maternal deaths occur. After all, it might reveal that Idaho's stringent abortion laws have resulted in more deaths, either because women were denied life-saving abortions or because Idaho has become underserved as obgyns leave the state and rural hospitals close their maternity wards. But--hey!--those women knew what they were getting into when they had S-E-X, right Meggymish?

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        1. Meggymish

          Yep. They did. Sex is how babies are made, in case you missed fifth grade sex ed. And I have no problem with saying "sex." Sex, sex, sex. Come on, get serious.

          Every single state which has passed abortion restrictions has a carve out for imminently life threatening situations, where the principle of double effect applies. In case you're unfamiliar, which many people are, that means that an action which would have tragic but anticipated results (i.e. the death of a baby, eg. due to the necessity of removing a hemorrhaging placenta in a placental abruption) is ethically permissible when the choice is to save one life or lose both. This is because unlike in an elective abortion, the action taken has the intent of saving the only person it's possible to save under certain rare emergency circumstances, eg. an emergency D&C for an early placental abruption or an oopherectomy/salpingectomy for an ectopic pregnancy. The intent is not to kill the baby but to save the mother. There's no way the baby would survive without the mother surviving, but the mother would die if the particular pathology of her pregnancy is not resolved one way or another. Every state allows that. Catholic hospitals allow that.

          It's a category difference from elective abortions, where the whole purpose is to end the life of the baby, rather than to save the mother.

          In every instance that's been in the news where someone is denied a life saving procedure under those conditions, it's either the doctor being an idiot or making an idiotic political statement (see how eeeeevil prolife laws are, I had to turn away a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, or I wasn't sure I could do a D&C to treat a woman's miscarriage, or whatever) or their hospital has a really crappy legal department, or to be more charitable, maybe they don't understand the law or the law is poorly written. Regardless, those doctors should be fired and hauled in front of an ethics board. If they're making a political statement by denying a woman miscarriage management, which might include a D&C to ensure the fetal remains are completely removed (note: the remains, not a living baby in a healthy pregnancy) or they deny treatment to a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, or worse, they are risking the lives of their patients to make a point that doesn't need to be made.

          Every prolife person who has thought about their position at all understands the difference between an elective abortion and a life threatening emergency which would require terminating the pregnancy (note: "termination of pregnancy" is most often accomplished by birth under normal conditions, I'm referring here to situations where mom and/or baby would not survive birth or c-section). We all understand there are situations where the only possibility is to try to save the mother even when it means the baby can't be saved. This includes situations where the baby is too young to survive, which can vary depending on the level of neonatal care available at the local hospital, or where there is a slight chance the baby might survive an emergency c-section but the mother would most likely die (some complications of pregnancy can lead to a condition called DIC, for example, which makes hemorrhage much worse and harder to control). Thankfully, those situations are rare.

          The point is, every state requires life saving treatment for any patient that presents in their EDs with a life threatening condition or who is in labor. That is not in conflict with any law that prevents *elective* abortions. If there are state laws that are poorly written, then they need to be amended to make that distinction more clear.

          It's crappy that rural hospitals are having to close maternity floors, or any specialty floors, but that is a perennial problem related to staffing and it's happening all over. Nursing schools and medical schools try to promote working in rural communities, and some federal student loans of graduates who choose to work in such hospitals can be forgiven through a program called something I can't remember off the top of my head. But that's irrelevant to the issue of elective abortion bans.

          I know pro-abortion-choice people like to talk about the alleged horrors of back alley abortions, as if the conditions under which a mother chooses to have her child killed should make the case for legal killing. That's like saying that we should make contract killing legal because of how dangerous hiring a killer is to the person doing the hiring. Setting that aside, and speaking of statistics, you may have heard that "tens of thousands of women died" due to illegal abortions before Roe. The co-founder of NARAL, Dr. Bernard Nathanson (among others) came out and said publicly that those numbers were a deliberate, complete fabrication. A lie. But that lie has seeped into the public consciousness and the debate about abortion, which was why they said it in the first place. If states like Idaho are not tracking maternal deaths, that's a mistake on their part. But it's not relevant to the issue of elective abortion, because emergency/life threatening situations requiring emergency management/emergency termination of pregnancy by whatever method (eg. inducing early labor to treat eclampsia, or the procedures I mentioned above) are not what's covered under the elective abortion ban.

          One final point: it's not any particular surgical procedures that are banned. It's the circumstances of the use of those procedures. For example, and setting aside the emergency situations already mentioned, there are many uses for D&C that are not ending a baby's life. This is one area where the way the laws are written can lead to confusion. Most legislatures which have written and/or passed laws banning elective abortion do so with the advice of prolife medical professionals, but I think all of them should be, to avoid confusion about any of the above. This is already way too long, so I won't get into the whole "exceptions for rape and incest" thing. I wrote an article about it elsewhere.

          If you're interested in the issue, I'd recommend a book by Francis J Beckwith called "Defending Life: a moral and legal case against abortion choice." It's a comprehensive, non-religious defense of the prolife position that steelmans the pro-abortion-choice arguments and deals with them respectfully but decisively. For an easier read, "Unplanned" by Abby Johnson is great. Entertaining and personal, she takes the reader through her change of heart on the issue, with compassion. There's also a movie by the same name. Or watch "3801 Lancaster" to see how legal abortion doesn't mean safe. Both movies are on Amazon.

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          1. Avatar photo
            Mudskipper

            I know about the principle of double effect. I also know that it conflicts with what most ob-gyns consider normal and ethical standard of care for their patients. Their goal is to keep women from arriving at EDs on the brink of death. Emergency situations are just that: an emergency. They don't always end well for the person involved. You can't stop sepsis with a flick of the switch.

            Many ob-gyns do not want to be forced into giving substandard care to their patients and are voting with their feet. And the unintended consequence of strict anti-abortion laws will be a shortage of practitioners in those states. Many of these states already have a dismal track record when it comes to maternal deaths. That record will get worse.

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  5. Clint Wickensheimer

    I am against the death penalty. Everyone has the right to live, regardless of their previous actions (or what a jury might mistakenly believe to have been their action). Unborn babies to old people - everyone.
    I won’t argue that as individuals, we want justice - an eye for an eye - but the state has no right to take a life.

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  6. Avatar photo
    David M

    Guillotine. It is very effective and very fast.

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      Rochejaquelein

      Correct in theory. But its been a symbol of injustice and cruelty in the English speaking world for hundreds of years and it only other well know user outside of France, Weimar and Nazi Germany, didn't help. Its use would have struck the founders (well, maybe not that old Jacobin sympathizer Jefferson) who lived to see the terror as unusual and cruel, and thats where its stayed. It would be one of the last methods to be adopted solely due to historical baggage.

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        David M

        But at one time we used the gas chamber for execution despite its use during the Holocaust.

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  7. Matt D.

    Random bold "t" in the phrase "to close the factory that produced it"

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  8. Bubba

    I remain baffled. I’ve had general anesthesia more than once. Why is this so difficult?

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      Stephanie

      We're not talking about general anesthesia here.

      Those agents are not being made available for killing people.

      If you read through the Sotomayor dissent, she discusses the chemical agents actually used, and their medical properties, at great length.

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      Mike B

      From what I've read, first, drug companies won't sell the anesthetics to states, knowing they will be used for executions, and second, trained medical personnel won't administer the drugs, because it is a violation of medical ethics.

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      Magpie

      I asked myself the same question as I was reading this. I had minor surgery a while back. The doctors put me gently to sleep for a short period of time in order to remove some metal pins from my elbow (something I would not have wanted to be conscious for!). They could have done anything to me while I was under, including killing me, and it would have been gentle and painless. So I don't get this whole thing.

      FWIW, I oppose the death penalty anyway.

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        Stephanie

        This interesting article may explain why you don't recall pain which you may have fact experienced: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/12/surgical-patients-may-be-feeling-painand-mostly-forgetting-it/547439/

        So if a person being executed is administered an amnestic as a sedative, all the benefit of amnesia (LATER on) is lost. They experience all the pain but they don't have a "later" to not remember it.

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  9. Dynamis878

    According to Pew Research Center,
    * 64% of Americans say the death penalty is morally justified
    * but only 35% of Americans think that the death penalty deters people from committing crimes.
    * and 78% of Americans think that there is some risk that an innocent person will be put to death

    There's some interesting overlap there. I wish they had more breakdowns. Like, It would be interesting to see what percent support the death penalty, while at the same time acknowledge that innocent people are put to death, AND also believe that execution is not a deterrent.

    Also interesting how static the political party support is for death penalty over time. 77% R, 60% I, 46% D

    Not trying to "appeal to popularity", I just thought this was interesting.

    https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/02/most-americans-favor-the-death-penalty-despite-concerns-about-its-administration/

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      JDW

      It's hard for me to condemn it as wrong when it is mandated for Israel in the bible by God. I do agree we should take greater measures to be sure before applying the death penalty. I think the death penalty at least deters one individual for sure from committing further crimes.

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      1. Dynamis878

        Even if it only deters some people it has a deterrence effect. But the per-capita murder rate spiked when the supreme court banned death penalty. Pretty convincing to me.

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      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      It depends on what one means by "innocent".

      I oppose the death penalty, and I doubt it deters all that many criminals. I also don't believe innocent people are put to death consistently. I won't say never, but several of the cases I've seen, the evidence of innocence provided didn't convince me.

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      Mike B

      I count myself in the majority on all three questions. I do think execution is morally justified, at least in cases of premeditated murder - e.g., Dylan Roof. I also believe it has no deterrent effect, because few killers, if they even think about it at all, believe they will be caught, convicted, and executed. Finally, I think the risk of mistakenly executing innocent people exists and is significant.

      Therefore, even though it is morally acceptable in some cases, as a practical matter I believe the death penalty should be abolished. Even so, some cases, like the aforementioned Dylan Roof, give me pause.

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  10. Hikingguy

    Look up Blood Atonement and you will understand why Utah has the firing squad. Idaho has a large LDS population. I think there's nothing more complex to this.

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    1. Dynamis878

      I don't know about that. Most Mormons will deny blood atonement ever occurred, if they're even aware of it.

      But there could be some cultural residue for "meting out justice" in the public consciousness to some degree.

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      1. Hikingguy

        Most Mormons aren't going to want to talk about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, either.

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        1. Thadg

          Most Mormons? Talked to a bunch that have a reasonable understanding of the history and are delighted to talk about it , or just pick on some guy who happens to be a member of the church, or perhaps they were 12 or a little 80yo lady who's Mormon? Idiot.

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