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THE US STATE of Utah has this week become the only state to allow firing squads to be used for executions.
Under the law, firing squads will be used as a backup method if lethal injection drugs aren’t available.
The state’s governor Gary Herbert – who has called the measure ‘a little bit gruesome’ – signed the measure into law earlier this week.
Utah and other states have struggled to keep up their inventories of lethal injection inventories as European manufacturers opposed to capital punishment refuse to sell the components of lethal injections to US prisons.
Here’s a closer look at how Utah’s firing squad works.
What happens on execution day?
The prisoner is seated in a chair that is set up in front of a wood panel and in between stacked sandbags that keep the bullets from ricocheting around the room.
A target is pinned to the inmate’s heart. Shooters aim for the chest rather than the head because it’s a bigger target and usually allows for a faster death, said Utah politician Paul Ray, who sponsored the proposal.
The prisoner is offered a two-minute window to offer final words. In 1977, Gary Gilmore used that chance to say, “Let’s do this” before he died.
Five shooters set up about 25 feet from the chair, with their .30 caliber Winchester rifles pointing through slots in a wall.
Assuming they hit their target, the heart ruptures and the prisoner dies quickly from blood loss.
In 2010, Ronnie Lee Gardner was declared dead two minutes after he was shot. He was the last person killed by firing squad in the U.S.
Who are the shooters?
The gunmen are chosen from a pool of volunteer officers, with priority given to those from the area where the crime happened.
There are always more volunteers than spots on the squad, Ray said recently.
The shooters’ identities are kept anonymous, and one of their rifles is loaded with a blank round so nobody knows which officer killed the inmate.
Have firing squad executions ever gone wrong?
Not in recent history, said Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law School professor who has long studied executions.
Utah’s three firing squad executions in the past four decades went as planned, she said.
But the Washington, DC-based Death Penalty Information Centre, which opposes capital punishment, warns a firing squad is not a foolproof execution method because the inmate could move or the shooters could miss the heart, causing a slower, more painful death.
One such case appears to have happened in 1879, during Utah’s territorial days, when a firing squad missed Wallace Wilkerson’s heart and it took him 27 minutes to die, according to newspaper accounts.
Denno said errant shots to Wilkerson’s shoulder might have been intentional to make him suffer.
Can organs be donated after firing squad executions?
Yes. Unlike a lethal injection that poisons the organs, the bodies of people executed by firing squad remain usable.
Gilmore, executed by firing squad in 1977, agreed to donate his eyes, kidneys, liver and pituitary gland for medical use. His kidneys proved unusable because of bullet wounds. Gardner did not donate his organs.
Are any Utah inmates in line for the firing squad?
Yes. Ron Lafferty, who claimed God directed him to kill his sister-in-law and her baby daughter in 1984 because of the victim’s resistance to his beliefs in polygamy, has requested the firing squad.
Lawmakers in the state stopped offering inmates that choice in 2004, saying firing squads attracted intense media interest and took attention from victims. But Lafferty got the option because he was convicted before 2004.
The other Utah death-row inmate who could be next up for execution, Doug Carter, has chosen lethal injection. Under the new law, Carter would get the firing squad if the state can’t get its hands on the lethal injection drugs.
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Apart from illegal immigrants, who have been promised their own front door key and some landlords, the majority of people in the country have been ignored, used, and let down by our landlord politicians.
Hardly surprising that there is growing opposition to open door immigration and welfare for
all-comers when the government make no effort to look after our own.
It is really impossible now, after Roderick O’Gorman’s decision to translate his plans into multiple languages including the Georgian language, offering to provide asylum seekers with their “own-door” accommodation and “wrap-around supports, healthcare and education” on social media without having the infrastructure or finance to support it.
The reality is we are worse off than the last general election.
You reap what u sow after the crash construction workers and tradesmen were treated with contemt by the government lot emergrated some gave it up young lads now have no interest in construction as for bringing in foreign workers forget it no were for them or there families to live big mess
And won’t change by the following election either, regardless of who wins it!!
As someone else here mentioned, not enough builders and no indication of that changing. The last time we went on a building frenzy we imported the labour, they aren’t available anymore as every other developed country has a building shortage too.
Any politician who says they are going to solve the housing crisis is telling lies,
Regardless of what party or political persuasion.
@P.J. Nolan: Agree fully.
It’s going to get worse.
The situation will never improve with the rotating clown show that is going on. We’re the fools for putting them on the ballots at all.
Speculators including politicians buying up council land and then sitting on the property until it’s value increases by millions
“What we need is a vast scaling up of ambition”. Don’t make me laugh! There needs to be ambition there in the first place, something that is nonexistent in this current government.
A 100 years of lazy governments cannot be undone in 4 years
The ‘government’ (doesn’t matter who) has no interest in solving this.
@TG McMahon: we will never know when them bunch are repeatedly left in charge again and again and again
The uncomfortable truth that has to be accepted by everyone – but the general public particularly – is that our infatuation with home ownership is directly driving the housing shortage as much as any other factor. The development companies say it outright, there isn’t enough profit in it for them to build.
The fact we have people tripping over themselves to buy houses at 3, 4, 500k is being preyed on.. all stakeholders want their 20, 40k out of each house. It’s a rat race. Like healthcare is going, if you don’t jump to private you’ll be left behind.
We need to jump off this Hollywood train where a coffee is 12 euro and a haircut 60 because everyone is ‘entitled’ to be a business person and buying your own house is a status badge as much as anything else. ‘We’ have created and are maintaining the rod for our own backs, and the gameplayers are using it to full capacity with the backing of FFG. There is no possible happy ending on this track, we need to stop thinking just me, me, me and look at what we have collectively created. We are not Kardashian.
Housing and property is exactly why we have an open door policy on illegal immigration.
It is so companies like Cuckoo, Blackrock and other huge investment companies can maintain their asset prices ahead of any potential global financial crash. These companies are already taking a financial hit on all their commercial properties and the fear is that if there is another crash, all those family homes they have been buying out to bulk up their portfolios will also take a hit. It is no surprise that the government is now talking about converting office blocks into residential areas – this ensures that these companies boost the value of their commercial properties. I wonder how much of taxpayer’s money will be handed over in these refurbishments, most of which cost more to convert than if they were simply to build a new block of apartments? How much more of our public funds will be transferred to these private “shadow banks” as they are often referred to and more to the point, who will these apartments be for.
If there is another crash, these companies can no longer rely on quantitive easing, i.e. the central banks flooding the market with extra cash to keep their asset prices up, so how do you keep commercial and residential prices up in a failing economy? Oh, I know convert commercial to residential and simultaneously flood the country with a mass of people from all over the globe thus flooding the market with extra demand for housing. High demand plus low supply equals higher prices, che-ching!
On top of that, these companies won’t just secure high prices for their assets, but undoubtedly, in the interests of housing migrants, apartments and houses will be handed over to “asylum seekers” in the interest of “offering refuge”, whilst public money is used to subsidise or pay entirely for their rental costs, handing over further public funds to the same private interests in a double whammy of theft from the people – che-ching-che-ching!
But the government will look a whole lot different after it
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