Ready, Aim, Utah

by JASmius



To sum it up: Utah's capital punishment policy was guided and determined by public relations; now it is once again governed by logic:

Lawmakers have passed a bill that would make Utah the only state to allow firing squads for carrying out a death penalty if there is a shortage of execution drugs.

The bill’s sponsor, Republican Representative Paul Ray of Clearfield, touted the measure as being a more humane form of execution. Ray argued that a team of trained marksmen is faster and more humane than the drawn-out deaths that have occurred in botched lethal injections.

The bill gives Utah options, he said. “We would love to get the lethal injection worked out so we can continue with that but if not, now we have a backup plan,” Ray told the Associated Press. “I think Utah took a giant step backward,” said Ralph Dellapiana, director of Utahns for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. He called firing squads “a relic of a more barbaric past.”

IOW, Dellapiana doesn't like guns.

Whether Ray’s proposal will become law in the conservative Western state is unclear: Utah Governor Gary Herbert, a Republican, won’t say if he’ll sign the measure. His spokesman, Marty Carpenter, did issue a statement this week acknowledging that the method would give Utah a legitimate backup method if execution drugs are unavailable.

One would think that humane execution would be quick and painless.  Execution drugs were supposed to be precisely that, which is why every State with the death penalty went to them from firing squads, hangings, the electric chair, etc.  But now execution drugs don't always work, so Utah wants a backup method, and they've settled on bringing back firing squads.  So, what of it?

Nothing, really.  Any method of execution will be quick and painless if, well, "executed" correctly.  Some look more "barbaric" than others, but that's just aesthetics - which is precisely that upon which death penalty opponents zero in to turn the public against the death penalty itself.

It is, in short, not about the method, it's about ending executions, period.

I've no idea if Governor Herbert will sign or veto Representative Ray's bill.  But I hope he does sign it.  We've seen, in all manner of ways, where making policy by focus groups has gotten us.  Far past time logic was given another turn.