Death by firing squad: archaic method on the rise in US as Idaho opens new execution chamber

The tangled path of US capital punishment takes a new turn on Wednesday as Idaho becomes the first state to adopt the firing squad as its primary form of execution, embracing the brutal killing technique even as concerns grow that it can inflict excruciating pain and suffering. The state’s department of corrections (IDOC) says it has met its deadline, set by the legislature , to have its death chamber at a maximum security prison south of Boise retrofitted and open for business by 1 July. It has spent more than $1m in the venture, including $24,000 on a rack of AR-style, .308-caliber, scoped rifles that will be wielded by volunteer marksmen. The firing squad, long considered archaic and bloody, is on the rise across the US as states seek new approaches to capital punishment. Idaho becomes the seventh state to include it among its roster of execution methods, with a larger number of jurisdictions now allowing judicial killing by gunfire than at any time in US history. But despite insistence by supporters that the method is foolproof, alarm bells are sounding that the rapidly proliferating technique has the ability to go grotesquely wrong. Of the quartet of firing squad executions carried out in the US since 2010, two appear to have been botched, with bullets veering from their intended target of the left ventricle of the heart and causing prolonged and agonising deaths. …