PATTY HENETZ Associated Press writer | Posted: Friday, February 20, 2004 12:00 am
SALT LAKE CITY - The Utah Senate approved a bill Thursday that would eliminate firing squad executions - used most recently here in 1996 - unless lethal injection executions are found unconstitutional.
The bill passed 16-9 and now returns to the House for approval of some minor Senate amendments.
Sen. Ron Allen, a Democrat who carried the bill in the Senate, said allowing murderers to choose firing squads so they can "go out in a blaze of glory" perversely made heroes of criminals and caused victims' families more pain.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, two people in the United States have died by firing squad, both in Utah: Gary Gilmore in 1977 and John Albert Taylor in 1996. Taylor's execution drew more than 150 television crews from around the world.
Idaho and Oklahoma retain the firing squad on their books as an option, but haven't used it in modern history.
The Utah firing squads employ five riflemen, one of whom shoots a blank so none will know who fired the fatal shots.
Preparations for back-to-back firing squads last June drew widespread media interest, but both executions were delayed. One of the men, Roberto Arguelles, has since died of other causes.
The bill would allow firing squads only if a court struck down lethal injections as unconstitutional. However, the three condemned men on death row who have requested to die by firing squad can do so.
Attempts years ago to eliminate the firing squad ran afoul of legislators who felt that murderers should have the chance to atone for their crimes through the physical shedding of their blood.
Blood atonement was a belief held by many Mormons, though the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the dominant religion in Utah, says it was never recognized as doctrine. The church had no objection to this year's bill to get rid of the firing squad.
Arguing against the bill, Sen. Dave Thomas, a Republican, said media circuses are "exactly what we want" in executions.
"We don't want these sentences to be carried out in the dead of night so no one knows," he said, adding that lethal injection was painless and "the easy way out."
"I just think we're making it too easy on the convicted killers," he said.
Allen responded that if painful executions were the point, "we might as well return to drawing and quartering."