Death by firing squad could become Idaho’s primary method of execution under a bill headed to the governor’s desk this week.
The Idaho Senate passed the bill on Wednesday, and it will take effect next year if it is signed by Gov. Brad Little.
Firing-squad executions have been a back-up method in Idaho since 2023, available only if prison officials are unable to obtain lethal injection drugs.
Rep. Doug Ricks, the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation was spurred by Idaho’s botched attempt to execute Thomas Eugene Creech last year, when execution team members were unable to find a suitable vein for an IV line. He suggested shooting someone was more effective and humane than other execution methods. He speculated that the state could use a machine or “electronic triggering methods” that would eliminate the need for human volunteers to pull the triggers.
“One thing about this method, it’s pretty sure,” Ricks said during a hearing on the bill last month. “It’s not going to be something that gets done part way.”
Four other states — Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah — also allow the use of firing squads in certain circumstances, but the method has rarely been used in recent history. South Carolina put the first person to death by firing squad in the US. in 15 years, with the execution of Brad Sigmon Friday 7 March, 2025.
The Federal Defender Services of Idaho, which represents many of the people on the Idaho’s death row, declined to comment on the bill.
Idaho Department of Correction officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The prison recently finished remodeling its lethal injection chamber to add a space where execution team members can use more invasive methods of inserting an IV line deep into the bodynear the heart if they can’t successfully place an IV line in the condemned person’s arms or legs.
Republican Sen. Daniel Foreman, a retired police officer and former Air Force veteran who served in combat, was the only Republican to debate against the bill on Wednesday. He said he has seen shooting deaths, and that they are “anything but humane.”
“The consequences of a botched firing execution are more graphic, more mentally, psychologically devastating” than other botched execution methods, Foreman said.
Democratic Sen. Melissa Wintrow agreed, calling firing squads “barbaric” and saying they would create bad optics for the state.
But Republican Sen. Brian Lenney said lawmakers should remember why capital punishment is imposed.
“If we’re talking about terror, and we’re talking about barbaric, I think we should remember why this man is on death row in the first place,” he said, describing some of the criminal charges against Creech.
In the meantime, a convicted double murderer has been executed by firing squad – the first such execution in the United States since 2010, according to the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
The execution of Brad Sigmon, 67, by the South Carolina Department of Corrections on Friday is only the fourth firing squad execution in the US since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Sigmon chose firing squad over the two other state-approved methods of execution, lethal injection or the electric chair. He was pronounced dead by a physician at 6:08 p.m. ET, officials said at a news conference Friday.
Sigmon was convicted of the 2001 bludgeoning deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s parents. After their murders, Sigmon kidnapped his ex-girlfriend at gunpoint, but she managed to escape.
In a final statement shared by his lawyer, Sigmon said, “I want my closing statement to be one of love and a calling to my fellow Christians to help us end the death penalty.”
He quoted several Bible passages that emphasize forgiveness and the law. “Nowhere does God in the New Testament give man the authority to kill another man,” he said.
One of Sigmon’s attorneys, Gerald “Bo” King, said shortly after the execution that his client’s “death was horrifying and violent.”
“He chose the firing squad knowing that three bullets would shatter his bones and destroy his heart,” King said in a statement. “But that was the only choice he had, after the state’s three executions by lethal injection inflicted prolonged and potentially torturous deaths on men he loved like brothers.”
King described Sigmon as “a man who has devoted himself to his faith, and to ministry and service to all around him” who committed no acts of violence during his 23 years in prison.
King said the state had failed to provide information about drugs used in the lethal injection. “Brad only wanted assurances that these drugs were not expired, or diluted, or spoiled — what any of us would want to know about the medication we take, or the food we eat, much less the means of our death,” he said.
Sigmon became the oldest person executed by the state, according to King.
In the hours ahead of Sigmon’s scheduled execution, several protesters gathered outside the prison where he’s incarcerated, calling for an end to capital punishment. They held banners proclaiming “All Life is Precious” and “No More Killing.”
South Carolina Republican Gov. Henry McMaster declined a bid for clemency from Sigmon Friday evening. Attorneys for Sigmon filed a petition for executive clemency with the governor, asking to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment without parole, saying in a news release, “Sigmon committed his crimes and stood trial while in the grip of an undiagnosed, inherited mental illness.”
The US Supreme Court likewise declined to halt Sigmon’s execution Friday. As is often the case on its emergency docket, the court did not explain its reasoning. There were no noted dissents.
In a Wednesday filing to the Supreme Court, Sigmon’s attorneys had sought a stay of his execution, asking the high court “to consider whether South Carolina’s compressed election timeline and arbitrary denial of information relating to the South Carolina Department of Corrections lethal injection drugs violate Due Process.”
Attorneys for Sigmon say they have tried to obtain more information about the drugs used during lethal injection, but they have been blocked “at every turn.”
According to the state department of corrections, Sigmon’s attorneys were provided a copy of the lethal injection protocols under seal. When asked, King said that though they received some information from the department, they have asked for basic facts regarding the expiration date of the drugs, test results and storage conditions.
“None of that information, none of those basic facts, are in the protocols,” he said.
How firing squad executions work
Sigmon’s execution took place at the Broad River Correctional Institution, in Columbia, South Carolina, where all executions in the state are carried out.
Sigmon received his special requested meal Wednesday night, King said. He was given an individual meal from Kentucky Fried Chicken that included mashed potatoes and green beans.
In 2022, the South Carolina Department of Corrections detailed the room setup and protocols for how a firing squad execution would be carried out. The rifles used by the three-member firing squad would not be visible to witnesses, the department said at the time. All three rifles will be loaded with live rounds.
“The firing squad is thought to cause nearly instant unconsciousness and death from exsanguinating hemorrhage follows shortly thereafter,” Dr. Jonathan Groner, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine told CNN Sunday. “The three or four executioners firing large caliber bullets at the heart would instantly stop the blood flow to the brain, which, like a cardiac arrest, causes rapid loss of brain function.”
Jeffrey Collins, a reporter for The Associated Press and one of the witnesses to the execution, said at a news conference that Sigmon wore a black jumpsuit and was “completely strapped into” a chair.
King read Sigmon’s final statement before a hood was placed over his head. His arms were bare but no other skin was visible, said Collins.
Shots rang out at 6:05 p.m., Collins said. Witnesses “involuntarily flinched” when the shooting began. “A small red stain” appeared on Sigmon’s chest, he said.
A doctor performed an examination for about 90 seconds and Sigmon was declared dead at 6:08 p.m., according to Collins and the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
Witnesses were unable to see the guns, according to Anna Dobbins, a reporter for WYFF who also acted as a witness for the execution. The three shots rang out at the same time, she said.
Collins, who has witnessed all three methods of execution, said that the firing squad was “much quicker” than other methods. “The time from the shots being fired to the time death was declared was a little over two minutes,” he said.
He described a “very somber, quiet” environment inside the execution chamber.
Each of the three executioners is an employee of the Department of Corrections and volunteered to be part of the team, Chrysti Shain, a spokesperson for the department told CNN.
The firing squad fired from 15 feet away, and witnesses could see the right-side profile of the condemned inmate, according to the DOC’s protocol.
Each of the executioners fired once from their rifles using .308a Winchester TAP Urban bullets, Shain said at the news conference. The bullet provides rapid expansion and fragmentation, Shain said previously.
History of execution by firing squad
Over 1,600 executions have taken place in the United States since the 1970s, and the vast majority have been carried out by lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI), a nonprofit resource for data on the practice of executions. More than 160 inmates have died by electrocution and 15 by gas, according to the group’s data.
Only three other inmates have been executed by firing squad since 1977, all of them in Utah. The last firing squad execution was Ronnie Gardner, who chose the method in June of 2010.
Utah uses a five-member firing squad, according to the state department of corrections. Armed with .30 caliber rifles loaded with two round, the five shooters, who are not DOC employees, stand 20 to 25 feet away from the inmate. One of the rifles is loaded with blank rounds, the department added.
Five states – Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah allow execution by firing squad, according to DPI.
In Mississippi and Oklahoma, the firing squad option is available “if nitrogen hypoxia, lethal injection, and electrocution are held unconstitutional or ‘otherwise unavailable,’” they state.
Idaho could become the only state that allows firing squad as its primary form of execution, after a bill passed the state legislature this week. The bill heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Brad Little for his signature. Currently, the state allows for a firing squad execution as a backup method if lethal injection drugs are not available. The bill comes after one attempt to execute an inmate via lethal injection failed, with officials unable to set an intravenous line.
In 2021, South Carolina passed a law allowing execution by firing squad in the state but named the electric chair the state’s primary means of execution. The law allows inmates the option to instead choose firing squad or lethal injection, if available. The change was made as states around the country hit barriers finding the required drugs for lethal injection, which caused many to pause executions at the time.
In South Carolina, the inmate must opt for their method of execution in writing, two weeks before their scheduled death, according to the DPI. In Utah, if a person was sentenced to death before May 3, 2004, they could choose firing squad as an execution option. The method can also be authorized in the state “if lethal-injection drugs are unavailable,” the group says.
“States are looking for a way to carry out executions that appear to be as peaceful as possible, but it’s not,” Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Policy Project told CNN. “And when they can’t do that, if they’re desperate to carry out executions, they will blow a hole in a prisoner with rifles to carry them out. That takes the death penalty optically to a new level, because capital punishment has always been brutal. But when we resort to visibly brutal methods, that may have a further impact and to accelerate public opinion away from the death penalty.”
South Carolina has 28 other inmates on death row, according to state records.
Culled from CNN
