In the wake of a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma last month, a Utah politician believes a firing squad is a more humane form of execution.
And he plans to bring back that option for criminals sentenced to death in his state.
Paul Ray, a Republican from the northern Utah city of Clearfield, plans to introduce his proposal during Utah's next legislative session in January.
Politicians in Wyoming and Missouri floated similar ideas this year, but both efforts stalled.
Ray, however, may succeed.
Utah already has a tradition of execution by firing squad, with five police officers using .30-calibre Winchester rifles to execute Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010, the last execution by rifle to be held in the state.
Ray argues the controversial method may seem more palatable now, especially as states struggle to deal with lawsuits and drug shortages that have complicated lethal injections.
"It sounds like the Wild West, but it's probably the most humane way to kill somebody," Ray says.
Utah eliminated execution by firing squad in 2004, citing the excessive media attention it gave inmates.
But those sentenced to death before that date still had the option of choosing it, which is how Gardner ended up standing in front of five armed Utah police officers.
Gardner was sentenced to death for fatally shooting a Salt Lake City lawyer in 1985 while trying to escape from a courthouse.
He was the third person to die by firing squad after the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
A couple of other death row inmates have opted to die by gunfire instead of lethal injection in Utah, but they are all several years away from exhausting the appeals of their death sentences, Assistant Utah Attorney-General Thomas Brunker said.
Ray's proposal would give all inmates the option.
Lethal injection, the default method of execution in the US, has received heightened scrutiny after drug shortages in recent years and the April incident in Oklahoma, when inmate Clayton Lockett's vein collapsed and he died of a heart attack more than 40 minutes later.
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