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The brother of the last man executed by firing squad in Utah urged lawmakers Monday not to bring back the practice as an alternative to lethal injection, calling it cruel and unnecessarily brutal.
"I got a chance to look at my brother's chest after he was shot," said Randy Gardner, the brother of Ronnie Lee Gardner, who was executed by firing squad in Utah in 2010.
"I could have stuck all four fingers in his chest," Gardner said, adding he believed it blew his brother's heart through his back. "To me that's totally cruel and unusual punishment."
But a committee endorsed 4-1 and sent to the full Senate HB11, which would make the firing squad the alternative to lethal injection if the state is unable to get access to the chemical cocktail used in the executions. The bill already passed the House.
"[A firing squad] may seem a little more barbaric, but it does what we need it to do in the end," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield.
Oklahoma, Arizona and Ohio have recently experienced botched executions by lethal injection, when the drugs administered did not kill the condemned men quickly, leaving them gasping or convulsing on the gurney.
Ray said a study by the University of Utah found that there is a 34 percent chance executions using a new blend of lethal chemicals will be botched. So an alternative is needed if the state can't get the chemicals it has traditionally used, and that alternative, he argued, should be the firing squad.
Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake and the Coaltion of Utahns Against the Death Penalty argued that the state should look at doing away with all executions.
The Utah prison inmate who may be the closest to execution is Douglas Carter, convicted of killing Eva Olesen during a 1985 robbery at her Provo home, although he still has legal actions pending in state and federal courts.
Twitter: @RobertGehrke