Let’s bring back firing squads for death-row prisoners, suggests Missouri Rep. Rick Brattin
The state of Missouri has been having a bit of trouble lately with regard to capital punishment. Procuring the drug used to kill people sentenced to death in Missouri has become problematic, and there are strong indications that Missouri may have violated some state and federal laws in attempting to acquire it.
Why bother with all that hassle? Let’s just bring back firing squads. So says local-ish Republican state Rep. Rick Brattin, who represents the 55th District, which includes Harrisonville and Raymore.
House Bill 1470, filed yesterday by Brattin, would allow the Department of Corrections to administer a judgment of death by firing squad. “If the judgment of death is to be carried out by firing squad, the director of the department of corrections shall select a five-person firing squad consisting of licensed peace officers,” it reads.
Firing-squad executions are nearly extinct in the United States. Utah is phasing them out – only inmates sentenced to death before 2004 are eligible – and Oklahoma law technically allows them but only in the event that lethal injection was found to be unconstitutional. Brattin – who has also filed a bill that would “require schools teaching the theory of evolution by natural selection to have a policy on parental notification and a mechanism for opting out of such instruction” – was possibly inspired by Bruce Burns, a Wyoming state senator who filed a similar bill earlier this week.
