Utah’s governor has signed a law approving the use of a firing squad as an alternative to lethal injection in executing prisoners.
The bill, with his signature, makes Utah the only state in which such a method is authorized — Oklahoma allows executions by firing squad only in the event that lethal injection and electrocution are ruled unconstitutional.
The issue has arisen in Utah because drugs used for lethal injections are becoming less available. Manufacturers in countries where citizens do not support capital punishment have attempted to block the use of their products in executions. In response, some states have begun using other combinations of drugs, with varying degrees of effectiveness, and prisoners sometimes take an agonizing amount of time to die.
That is difficult to understand, as veterinarians long ago perfected the art of euthanizing animals, and the government certainly has confiscated truckloads of drugs deemed to be dangerous. But Utah’s legislators believed the state needed an alternative method of execution.
Recent problems with lethal injections have gone a long way to negate the idea that the death penalty can be carried out in a way that is not horribly cruel to everyone involved, and the firing squad may well be more humane than any other method available. ISIS certainly has provided some examples of horrific ways to execute prisoners.
All that said, should citizens of the United States of America, in the 21st century, really be debating about the best way to execute prisoners?
Regardless of whether we should, we do. Many people still believe that execution is an appropriate punishment for some crimes, and a subset of that group would prefer to see condemned prisoners suffer acutely.
The Salt Lake Tribune, editorializing that “There is no humane death penalty,” commented on that preference. “The argument that killers were not concerned with the feelings of their victims, so the state need not be worried about its own behavior, is morally bankrupt. We do not let murderers set our ethical boundaries.”
There is a comforting fiction that executing a prisoner saves taxpayers the cost of housing and feeding — and perhaps entertaining — a person convicted of a heinous crime. The truth is that the criminal-justice system is expensive and that all the appeals leading up to an execution are especially costly. Regardless of the cost, some taxpayers would prefer to fund executions than spend a cent “supporting” a murderer or a rapist.
Most criminologists doubt the deterrent effect of the death penalty, in part because of the circumstances under which most capital crimes are committed.
Capital punishment is currently legal a majority of U.S. states, including Colorado. However, it is falling from favor in other parts of the world. In the Americas, with the exception of the United States, it is either illegal or used only in exceptional circumstances. That is true across Europe and much of Asia. In Africa, many nations where it is legal have not executed anyone in the past decade.
The list of places where capital punishment still is used is equally telling; it includes the entire Middle East except Israel, the northeast quadrant of Africa, and North Korea, plus Japan and the United States.
The contrast is clear, and so is the trend. Both suggest that the discussion we should be having is not about how to conduct executions, but about whether this is the kind of nation we want to be.