Roundup: Utah set to bring back firing squad executions

Utah is expected to become the only U.S. state to allow firing squad executions for death penalty convictions, as a Senate bill that passed Tuesday headed to the governor's desk for signing.

"We need options and if (European) drug companies don't like firing squads then they can sell us the drugs," the bill's sponsor, Republican Paul Ray from Clearfield, a suburb north of Salt Lake City, told Xinhua.

Ray was referring to a recent shortage of lethal injection drugs for U.S. prison and corrections facilities from European manufacturers who are opposed to the death penalty.

"We'll call their bluff," said Ray, noting that the Utah firing squad option becomes a done deal if the drugs are not available. " We're all in favor of lethal injections, but we don't want unnecessary delays," he added.

Utah Governor Gary Herbert is expected to sign HB11 within the next week, according to staff, that will allow a firing squad shooting if the lethal drug cocktail is not available at least 30 days before a scheduled execution.

Herbert, a pro-death penalty Republican, signed off on the last Utah execution in 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was put to death by five police officers with .30-caliber Winchester rifles.

Utah is the only U.S. state to use firing squads in the past 40 years.

Ray says the measure is a more humane form of execution because a team of trained marksmen can kill faster than the drawn-out deaths that sometimes occur in botched lethal injections.

A long list of anti-death penalty organizations were ignored by the legislation, that passed by an 18-10 vote with little discussion.

Utah looks "backward and backwoods," said Anna Brower with the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah.

Firing squads are a "relic of a more barbaric past," agreed Ralph Dellapiana, director of Utahans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, who called it a return to the Wild West.

Utah was settled by conservative Mormons in the 1840s, executed its first convicted murderer, a Native American by garroting in 1850, but changed to firing squad executions in 1861.

Across the country, other states are experiencing delays receiving lethal drugs, and Ray urged them to adopt similar legislation to encourage European producers to expedite the process.

A bill was proposed in the southern U.S. state of Arkansas in late February to allow firing squads as an alternative method to carry out executions, although a firing squad measure failed in Wyoming, another state in the U.S. west.

Utah has carried out three executions by firing squad since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

The state had abolished the practice a decade ago, with the Gardner case an exception because his conviction occurred before firing squad executions were outlawed. Endite