Idaho lawmakers have advanced a bill to make the state’s newly revived firing squad its main method of execution as the quadruple murder trial of aspiring criminologist and alleged co-ed killer Bryan Kohberger approaches.
The bill, H0037, has advanced to the Idaho House floor after clearing the Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee Tuesday.
Bill sponsor Rep. Bruce Skaug, who previously pushed for legislation that restored the firing squad as a backup option to lethal injection, argued that the botched lethal injection of condemned serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech last year highlights problems with that method.
IDAHO BEEFS UP FIRING SQUAD AS BRYAN KOHBERGER TRIAL NEARS
Creech was first sentenced to death for the murders of John Wayne Bradford and Edward Thomas Arnold in 1974. He was hitchhiking when the two picked him up. Then he shot them from behind.
He escaped death in that case when courts found the state’s old sentencing law to be unconstitutional and his punishment was commuted to life in prison. But then he crushed another inmate’s skull with a sock full of batteries and returned to death row in 1983 for the murder of David Dale Jensen.
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He had previously been acquitted of the murder of Paul Schrader, 70, in Tucson, Arizona. However, investigators still think he was the killer. He’s been convicted of five slayings altogether in Idaho, Oregon and California. He made dozens of additional confessions, although authorities say he is suspected of only six of those slayings.
“I, along with many others, believe the firing squad is more certain, has less appellate issues, and is more humane than other forms of execution,” Skaug told Fox News Digital last month.
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Creech was the fourth condemned inmate in the U.S. to survive his scheduled lethal injection in just a few years. The method spiraled into chaos after 2009, when the last American manufacturer of one of three drugs used in a lethal cocktail closed down, making it difficult for states to obtain. Its leading remaining manufacturer, an Italian company, opposes the death penalty.
One of the country’s leading experts on capital punishment, Fordham University professor Deborah Denno, has also argued that the firing squad is an effective and humane method of execution.
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“We’ve had three modern firing squad executions, and they have gone off as intended, and the inmate has died quickly and with dignity,” she said after Creech’s failed execution. “So, I think that is something to emphasize.”
IDAHO’S MOVE TO RESURRECT FIRING SQUAD ‘MAKES SENSE’ AS ‘QUICKEST, SUREST’ DEATH PENALTY OPTION, EXPERT SAYS
The new legislation will make the firing squad the primary means of execution, rather than a backup, as Idaho and other states continue to struggle with implementing lethal injections and obtaining the drugs to perform them. The proposed Idaho firing squad would be “mechanized” and automated, according to the Idaho Capital Sun.
“At first when you hear firing squad, if you’re not familiar with the history, you think ‘well that sounds barbaric’ is what I’ve heard from some,” Skaug told colleagues during a hearing earlier this week, according to the paper. “It is certain. It is quick. And it brings justice for the victims and their families in a more expeditious manner than other types.”
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The bill advances as prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Kohberger in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students: 21-year-olds Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves and 20-year-olds Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
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His trial is scheduled for later this year. He faces four charges of first-degree murder and another charge of felony burglary.
A judge entered not guilty pleas on his behalf at his arraignment.
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