By AP
...Utah Gov. Gary Herbert, (click here) a Republican, has declined to say if he'll approve or veto the bill, a decision that's not expected to come for a week or so. If he approves the measure, Utah would become the only state to allow an execution by firing squads if there's a drug shortage....
Utah's Republican majority Senate provided the vote to create an option from lethal injection.
By Tracy Connor
Utah lawmakers (click here) on Tuesday approved a measure that would make firing squad the method of execution in the state if authorities can't obtain increasingly scarce lethal injection drugs.
Before the 18-10 vote by
the state Senate, Gov. Gary Herbert declined to say explicitly if he
would sign the bill but noted that Utah is having trouble finding
chemicals to kill death-row inmates.
"If those substances
cannot be obtained, this proposal would make sure that those instructed
to carry out the lawful order of the court and the carefully deliberated
decision of the jury can do so," Herbert, a Republican, said in a
statement.
There are a handful of
inmates on Utah's death row who can already choose firing squad as their
execution method because they were sentenced before 2004, when the
state took that option away. The last prisoner to be executed by firing
squad was Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.
