Taking the life of another human being is the most serious act imaginable, whether it’s a murderer taking the life of a victim or the state taking a life.
A bill was introduced Wednesday morning to bring back the firing squad as a back-up method of execution in Idaho.
That’s because Idaho is having a difficult time procuring the drugs necessary for execution by lethal injection.
Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, introduced the bill to the House Ways & Means Committee, which agreed to print the bill.
After a history of executions by hanging, firing squad, gas chamber and electric chair, the method of lethal injection might seem a more humane approach, perhaps more palatable to folks on the fence or squeamish about the death penalty.
Lethal injection opponents argue that the paralytic element of the drug cocktail prevents the accused from expressing pain.
In other words, we’ve tried to evolve the death penalty so that we can’t observe what we’re doing; we don’t want to see the consequences of our actions.
In reality, a growing rate of mistakes have led to cruel and unusual punishment for some who found themselves at the sharp end of the needle.
A National Public Radio analysis in 2020 of more than 200 autopsies of death-row prisoners executed by lethal injection found that 84% of those executed showed evidence of pulmonary edema, a condition in which a person’s lungs fill with fluid that creates the feeling of suffocation or drowning, something that experts have likened to waterboarding, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Several studies have shown that lethal injection is the most botched method of execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
While lethal injection had a botched rate of 7%, according to one study, the 34 executions by firing squad had a botched rate of exactly zero.
Still, despite its relative effective rate, death by firing squad might turn some people off to the concept of the death penalty.
Pulling the trigger is a much more violent act than pushing a plunger on a syringe.
To most reasonable people, a firing squad would be considered barbaric and antiquated.
Perhaps knowing that a firing squad would be the final demise of a person could prove to be a deterrent for some juries and possibly even some prosecutors to pursue capital punishment.
Wouldn’t knowledge of a firing squad also be a deterrent to would-be killers? Not so, according to the ACLU, which reports that studies have shown no deterrent effect of the death penalty, regardless of the method.
If passed, Idaho would join four other states — Oklahoma, Utah, Mississippi and South Carolina — where use of a firing squad is an approved backup method of execution, according to previous reporting by the Idaho Statesman. The firing squad remained on the books in Idaho until 2009, and the Idaho Department of Correction considered asking lawmakers to reinstate the firing squad as recently as 2014, but the concept didn’t move forward, according to the Spokesman-Review.
The most immediate case at hand in Idaho is that of Gerald Pizzuto, who murdered two victims in a particularly brutal manner at a cabin near McCall in 1985, using a hammer to bludgeon them to death.
The gruesome and apparent callous nature of the killings stretches the patience of even the most strident death penalty opponent.
But there is something to the old saying that “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
And there are extenuating circumstances in Pizzuto’s case. Pizzuto has a diminished intellectual capacity and had a horrific childhood that included torture and sexual abuse. Further, Pizzuto appears to be at the end of his natural life and has been in hospice care for more than a year.
It’s worth noting, as well, that the government sometimes gets it wrong in death penalty cases.
Charles Fain was wrongfully convicted for the 1982 sexual assault and murder of a Nampa child. He spent 18 years on death row before he was released from prison in 2001, after a DNA analysis excluded Fain as a suspect in the killing. Donald Paradis was wrongfully convicted of a 1981 murder in Kootenai County and released after 20 years on death row.
Even though the state parole board ruled in favor of clemency for Pizzuto, Idaho Gov. Brad Little ordered the death of Pizzuto anyway, an order upheld by the Idaho Supreme Court.
His execution was delayed, though, because the state was unable to procure the drugs needed for the execution.
Which leaves us where we are now.
After Pizzuto, there are still seven more prisoners on Idaho’s death row, so the issue isn’t going away.
But perhaps the thought of pulling a trigger and putting a bullet through someone’s heart will be enough to turn some people against the death penalty altogether.
That might be a good thing.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Scott McIntosh is the Idaho Statesman opinion editor.
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