On Tuesday, the Utah Legislature passed a bill that would permit the state to use a firing squad for an execution if the state cannot procure the drugs that are currently used for a lethal injection. The bill needs Governor Herbert’s signature before it becomes a law.

This piece of news was picked up by national news outlets and is giving Utah a black-eye. While I am against the death penalty, I do not see using a firing squad as worse or more barbaric than lethal injection. I could not state it more eloquently than Judge Alex Kozinski wrote it in his dissent for Wood v. Ryan (internal citations omitted):

Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful—like something any one of us might experience in our final moments. But executions are, in fact, nothing like that. They are brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should it. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.

If some states and the federal government wish to continue carrying out the death penalty, they must turn away from this misguided path and return to more primitive—and foolproof—methods of execution…. Firing squads can be messy, but if we are willing to carry out executions, we should not shield ourselves from the reality that we are shedding human blood. If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn’t be carrying out executions at all.