Death by firing squad: archaic method on the rise in US as Idaho opens new execution chamber

Illustration: Guardian Design / Getty Images / AP View image in fullscreen Illustration: Guardian Design / Getty Images / AP Death by firing squad: archaic method on the rise in US as Idaho opens new execution chamber Supporters of the method say it’s foolproof – but forensic experts say it can be ‘excruciating’ amid allegations it’s been intentionally botched The tangled path of US capital punishment takes a new turn on Wednesday as Idaho becomes the first state to adopt the firing squad as its primary form of execution, embracing the brutal killing technique even as concerns grow that it can inflict excruciating pain and suffering. The state’s department of corrections (IDOC) says it has met its deadline, set by the legislature , to have its death chamber at a maximum security prison south of Boise retrofitted and open for business by 1 July. It has spent more than $1m in the venture, including $24,000 on a rack of AR-style, .308-caliber, scoped rifles that will be wielded by volunteer marksmen. The firing squad, long considered archaic and bloody, is on the rise across the US as states seek new approaches to capital punishment. Idaho becomes the seventh state to include it among its roster of execution methods, with a larger number of jurisdictions now allowing judicial killing by gunfire than at any time in US history. But despite insistence by supporters that the method is foolproof, alarm bells are sounding that the rapidly proliferating technique has the ability to go grotesquely wrong. Of the quartet of firing squad executions carried out in the US since 2010, two appear to have been botched, with bullets veering from their intended target of the left ventricle of the heart and causing prolonged and agonising deaths. Expert forensic analysts have also raised allegations in US supreme court filings that the blunders may have been intentionally inflicted as a form of retributive punishment. The chilling claim, speculative though it is, has the potential to cast a pall over the entire firing squad project. View image in fullscreen The Idaho maximum security institution. Photograph: Sarah A Miller for ProPublica via Getty Images Under Idaho’s new death protocol, the identities of the three shooters who have volunteered to join the firing squad are known only to the state prisons director and deputy. They will be responsible for carrying out court ordered killings of Idaho’s eight death row inmates, one of whom is female. “The department will be prepared to carry out an execution order after July 1,” IDOC said in a statement. It added that its procedures were designed “to ensure that any execution is conducted in a secure, orderly, and dignified manner”. Idaho switched procedures after lethal injection, the method most commonly used in modern America, ran into difficulties. In February 2024 the state had to call off, mid-flow, the execution of convicted murderer Thomas Creech after a medical team failed to establish an IV line. Other states ha