A chair sits in the execution chamber at the Utah State Prison in 2010 (Picture: AP)
Execution by firing squads may be making a return to the US amid the current shortage in lethal injection ingredients.
Multiple pharmaceutical companies have blocked the use of their products in lethal injections.
This has left states which still use the death penalty without the drugs they need to carry out these sentences.
Now, some states are looking at using a firing squad to put criminals, usually convicted of murder, to death.
Idaho lawmakers passed a bill last week, adding the state to the list of those which authorise using firing squads to kill those on death row. This includes Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina.
Utah is the only state to have actually used a firing squad in the last 50 years, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed at Utah State Prison on June 18, 2010.
The man, who killed an attorney during a courthouse escape attempt, sat in a chair surrounded by sandbags while five prison staffers fired from 25 feet away. Gardner was pronounced dead two minutes later.
Lethal injection executions have also faced criticism (Picture: Getty)
Some believe firing squads are actually more humane than the lethal injection, with Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor that is is ‘near instant and may also be comparatively painless’.
She wrote in a 2017 dissent that lethal drugs can mask intense pain by paralysing inmates while they are still sentient.
‘What cruel irony that the method that appears most humane may turn out to be our most cruel experiment yet,’ she said.
But others are opposed to firing squads for their bloodiness and violence, with anesthesiologist Joseph Antognini arguing that being shot can be ‘severely painful, especially related to shattering of bone and damage to the spinal cord’.
There has also been lots of controversy around using the lethal injection, leading Arizona to pause the death penalty.
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The state’s first Democratic governor since 2009, Katie Hobbs, ordered a review into death penalty protocols in January.
This was after Arizona was accused of taking too long to insert the IV into a prisoner’s body.
The Arizona Republic newspaper requested to witness last year’s three executions but each of these were rejected.
Ms Hobbs said she believes ‘it’s time to address the fact that this is a system that needs better oversight on numerous fronts’.
New Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, said recent executions had amounted to ‘torture’, saying a ‘thorough review of Arizona’s protocols and processes governing capital punishment is needed’.
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The last execution by firing squad saw a man strapped to a chair surrounded by sandbags while five prison staffers fired from 25 feet away.
