By Paul Foy, The Associated Press
Salt Lake City (AP) -- A committee of Utah legislators voted Wednesday to do away with the firing squad for condemned killers because the executions bring unwanted media attention.
Utah, the only state that still uses firing squads, would take that option away from three of 10 men on death row who have elected to die that way, killing them by lethal injection instead.
“If they choose the firing squad, it’s one last magnificent manipulation of the system to bring attention to themselves,” Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, told a hearing on Wednesday.
“It’s time for Utah to do away with the firing squad,” she said.
The House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee voted 9-0 to abolish the practice, a relic of Utah’s territorial days. The measure is expected to be approved by the full Legislature within six weeks.
The House panel considered giving family members of a victim the right to decide whether a killer should be put to death by gunfire or lethal injection, but decided that would only subject the family to needless pressure and media scrutiny. It would have also raised legal concerns because relatives of a victim have no right to impose punishment.
Lawmakers decided it was good enough to take away the killers’ choice, a peculiar right under Utah law. Legal experts are uncertain why the choice was offered.
“It’s simply seems odd to empower the criminal defendant convicted of murder,” said Ron Gordon, director of the Utah Sentencing Commission. “Lost from the equation is the victim and the victim’s family and friends. The offender remains in the spotlight.”
The state’s last firing squad execution in 1996 drew more than 150 television crews from around the world.
Preparations for back-to-back firing squads last June drew widespread media interest, but both executions were delayed. One of the men, Roberta Arguelles, was found dead of poisoning from an intestinal perforation last November.
“This method of execution is a magnet for attention, and it’s not positive attention,” Allen said.
Police Chief Edward Rhoades of Heber, Utah, said he worried that a change in law would bring about a stay of execution, which he said would be “a slap to the face of the families and the victims as well as to the system.”
But state lawyers wrote the law to give the three killers who want the firing squad their wish if they appeal to a court for it and win. Rhoades said he was satisfied by that condition.
Utah’s use of the firing squad drew on a purported early Mormon belief that held that justice was not done unless a murderer’s blood was shed, but it also had a practical side.
The firing squad came before statehood in 1896 “because hanging is such a mess,” said Paul Boyden, director of the Statewide Association of Prosecutors. Boyden also is a member of the Utah Sentencing Commission, which recommended eliminating the firing squads last August.
The Sentencing Commission acted after consulting The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which in a terse statement said it had “no objection” to doing away with that form of execution.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, two people in the United States have died by firing squad, both in Utah: Gary Gilmore in 1977 and John Albert Taylor in 1996.
The squads employ five riflemen, one of whom shoots a blank so none will know who fired the fatal shots.
Idaho and Oklahoma retain the firing squad on their books as an option if other methods are not viable, but haven’t used it in modern history.
Utah legislators will consider a separate measure banning executions on Sundays, Mondays or holidays to save the state from paying overtime for officers preparing for executions.