'Dignity for all': Idaho bill proposes firing squad as state's primary execution method

Kevin Fixler, The Idaho Statesman on Jan 21, 2025

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BOISE, Idaho — Eleven months after Idaho failed to execute a prisoner for the first time in state history using lethal injection, Republican lawmakers have their targets set on adopting a firing squad as the primary execution method.

Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, introduced the bill Tuesday, which would make Idaho the only U.S. state to give preference to a firing squad. Skaug sponsored a bill that became law in 2023 that added back the firing squad as a backup execution in the state, but only when lethal injection is not possible because of a lack of execution drugs. The Idaho Department of Correction has since had more consistent access to pentobarbital, the state’s preferred chemical for lethal injections.

But nearly two years later — and after state prison officials failed to find a suitable vein for an IV in the body of 73-year-old death row prisoner Thomas Creech — Skaug now hopes to ensure Idaho’s nine-member death row is put to death by bullets. Lethal injection would become the state’s backup method.

“I see this bill as being less problematic with appeals in the courts,” Skaug told a House committee Tuesday. “Essentially, if you don’t have the bullets, then you go to the pentobarbital.”

Four other states in the U.S. have the firing squad on the books: Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah and South Carolina. But none has the execution method as its lead option. If passed into law, Idaho would become the lone state to do so.

Utah from 1980-1982 had the firing squad as its primary execution method, according to Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University in New York City and one of the foremost death penalty experts in the U.S. She cited a growing history of failed and botched executions by lethal injection in the U.S., which a Department of Justice report last week said evidence shows is a method in which there is “significant uncertainty” whether it causes unnecessary pain and suffering, which may violate the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“I think this would be a move in a positive direction for the state of Idaho,” Denno told the Idaho Statesman by phone Tuesday, “because it’s the least inhumane method that we currently have in the United States.”

If passed into law in Idaho, the firing squad would overtake lethal injection as the state’s primary method in July 2026, Skaug said. That would grant the state prison system time to complete renovations at the maximum security prison south of Boise, and also carry out lethal injection executions in the interim, he said.

On Tuesday, Rep. Chris Matthias, D-Boise, voiced his ongoing hesitancy about Idaho using a firing squad to execute prisoners.

“When this came to us I think two years ago, I just expressed concerns about the state being in the retributive killing business, and will still bring that sentiment to the full hearing,” he told the committee.

In an interview, Skaug told the Statesman that his bill is related to carrying out the state’s death penalty cases with efficiency and “dignity for all.”

“It is retribution, for the families that lost someone to murder and the person that died from murder,” Skaug said, adding that retribution is a part of what judges are meant to consider when sentencing.

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