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Mississippi considers firing squad as method of execution

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Mississippi lawmakers are advancing a proposal to add firing squad, electrocution and gas chamber as execution methods in case a court blocks the use of lethal injection drugs.

Republican Rep. Andy Gipson says House Bill 638 is a response to lawsuits by "liberal, left-wing radicals."

The bill passed the House amid opposition Wednesday, and moves to the Senate.

Lethal injection is Mississippi's only execution method. The state faces lawsuits claiming the drugs it plans to use would violate constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.

Mississippi hasn't been able to acquire the execution drugs it once used, and it last carried out an execution in 2012.

The Death Penalty Information Center says of the 33 states with the death penalty, only Oklahoma and Utah have firing squad as an option.

I have had some input to a different state's exploration of this approach.

The underlying problem is that they're trying to get around the pharmaceutical companies' block on sales of lethal injection drugs to state prison pharmacy inventories. So lawyers for both sides are preparing lawsuits either for or against the death penalty in several states. I've been asked some questions by some of those folks, and as a consequence I've done some medical research into the question.

In my opinion, execution by firing squad is the second-most-humane method in existence, after lethal injection. Five or six rifle bullets to the central chest/heart/mediastinum will effectively kill the recipient very quickly, with very little or no pain.

Death by hanging, electrocution, and poison gas can take a very long time in some cases. There are plenty of documented cases of failed executions involving all of these methods, and the prolonged agony of the condemned men and women cannot be dismissed lightly. Death by decapitation via guillotine is quick and certain, but the likelihood that the condemned suffers excruciating pain for several seconds before the brain shuts off from blood loss is high; and it's damn messy, much messier than shooting someone in the chest.

So if we're going to allow the State to kill criminals, firing squads are likely to become the standard method... unless the liberal executives who run the pharmaceutical companies back off from their intransigence.

It was an ordinary murder, by an ordinary man: his cousin died in a mining fire in 1911, and Andriza (or Andrija) Mircovich, feeling he got stiffed on the resulting inheritance, stabbed to death the probate attorney (a fellow South Slav named Gregorovich).

The execution, however, was extraordinary — and has never in history been repeated.

The march of science had lately made possible whole new methods of execution heretofore uncontemplated — like electricity and poison gas. At the same time, mechanical engineering had improved old standbys like beheading and hanging from slipshod, error-prone affairs to efficient operations worthy of an age of industry.

Somewhere between those categories lies the firing squad. Firearms, of course, were new technology relative to the noose and a big ol’ axe, but we do find executions by shooting back to the 17th century at least.

Though the guns themselves had been updated, Nevada was forced by circumstances to do for firing squads what Dr. Guillotin had done for headsmen.

Nevada law at the time allowed inmates to choose between hanging and shooting. The state had all the accoutrement for the former, but it hadn’t ever conducted one of the latter. When Mircovich insisted on being shot, and prison officials couldn’t find people willing to pull the trigger, Nevada actually built a “shooting gallery of steel” — an entire contraption to automate the lethal fusillade.

The 1,000-pound gallery of steel, whose arrival caused the prison warden George Cowing to resign in horror,* consisted of a shed with three protruding mounted rifles, which would be individually sighted on the heart of the restrained prisoner and fired when guards cut a string to release a spring mechanism.

In a macabre Rube Goldberg parody, it was improved for the consciences of the guards by having three strings that would be simultaneously cut, only one of which actually triggered the gallery. A redundant layer of plausible deniability was added, since each of the three guards had aimed only one of the three rifles, by loading only two of the three guns with live ammunition.

Now if they would just add something that involves pummeling with blunt objects...

I think hanging should be used. The rope and platform is a lot cheaper than those expensive drug cocktails.

Why is it a vet can put a horse down with no evidence of suffering and educated people can not knock out a 200 lb criminal?

How about a magnolia for hanging?

State tree and all....


spring blossoms would really give it some flair.