The state House has given initial approval to a change suggested by a consultant hired by Gov. Katie Hobbs, who reviewed issues the state has had with lethal injection but was fired by Hobbs before completing his report.
If lawmakers in the House and Senate approve HCR2024, then voters would be asked next year to change the Constitution to specify the use of firing squads over the use of drugs, the method they approved in 1992.
The move won’t affect any executions before then, including that of Aaron Gunches, who is set to be put to death on March 19. Gunches waived additional appeals and asked to be executed.
Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, cited the suggestion of retired federal Magistrate Judge David Duncan, the expert that Hobbs had hired in 2023 to review how the death penalty is implemented in Arizona. Duncan suggested that switching to a firing squad was a more humane way of carrying out executions, a view held by others.
Those include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, appointed to the high court by former President Barack Obama, who wrote in a 2017 dissent that firing squads negate the problems sometimes associated with lethal injections because they provide a certain, quick death.
“In addition to being near instant, death by shooting may also be comparatively painless,” she wrote in the dissent in a case where a prisoner sought that method rather than lethal injection.
Kolodin said during the House debate that the Democratic governor should have listened to Duncan, “her hand-picked expert.”
“But instead of taking his advice seriously and asking this body to run a bill to switch our state’s method of execution to the firing squad, as the taxpayer-funded independent analysis suggested we should do, she instead chose to fire that independent expert,” Kolodin said. “Well … I for one, believe that expert’s analysis should be taken seriously.”
He said using a firing squad has several advantages over the state’s current method. Those include being far cheaper because it will prompt fewer legal challenges, and because bullets are far less expensive than the drugs the state must search to find and buy. Major drug manufacturers refuse to sell their products for use in executions.
“It is also quicker and has a lower failure rate, and is by far the most humane and expeditious way to dispatch the condemned,” Kolodin said.
Wednesday’s debate on how best to kill a condemned prisoner came minutes after the House had debated a GOP-sponsored proposal increasing regulations on the use of drugs that induce abortions. The move came despite a new voter-approved amendment enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution.
The stark contrast drew the attention of Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, who called out majority Republicans for the contradiction.
“I find it interesting that we just got done a few bills ago hearing about the sanctity of life and that we believe in life, we are here for life, thou shall not kill,” she said.
“And then the same party is putting up a bill to use a firing squad to kill people,” Gutierrez continued. “It makes absolutely no sense. It would be an embarrassment for Arizona.”
She called the measure a waste of time that would be better spent dealing with issues like health care, affordable housing and school safety.
Responding to Gutierrez, Rep. Nick Kupper, R-Surprise, said he opposes both abortion and the death penalty but still backs Kolodin’s proposal.
“I don’t believe that if I’m going to be pro-life, I can be pro-death in that regard,” he said.
“However, to the point of this bill, the people of Arizona decided we should have a death penalty,” Kupper continued. “A firing squad is a much more humane way. And I think we should do things in the most humane way we can.”
Prompted by a question by a fellow Republican, Kolodin noted that lethal injections are more expensive than a firing squad.
The last time the state ordered lethal injection drugs it spent $1.5 million to buy enough for multiple executions, although its shelf-life is unknown. And while his measure does not detail firing squad rules, he said they generally have between five and eight members, each firing a rifle whose ammunition costs between 50 cents and a dollar per bullet.
“So we know that it is a fairly inexpensive method compared to lethal injection,” he said.
Hobbs hired Duncan as a special “death penalty commissioner” shortly after she took office in January 2023 and issued an executive order directing a review of previous problems with Arizona executions and suggestions on how to avoid them in the future. Attorney General Kris Mayes, also a Democrat, formally paused all executions while Duncan conducted his review.
In an interview shortly after he was dismissed by Hobbs last November, Duncan told Capitol Media Services that he determined that there was no humane way to kill someone using lethal injection.
“She asked me to find out what went wrong with the previous injections that resulted in perceptions, widely held, that they were botched,” Duncan said, including whether lethal injections can be safely used, adding that it appears the governor did not want to hear that message.
Arizona halted executions for eight years after it took inmate Joseph Wood nearly two hours and repeated injections of a two-drug mixture to die in July 2014. When they resumed in 2022, the year before Hobbs took office, the state had moved to a single-drug method using pentobarbital. Three men were executed in 2022.
What Duncan said he found is that lethal injections are far from being “humane,” as was promoted when lethal injections were authorized by voters in 1992. That is now the default method, although those sentenced before that date can also choose to die in the state’s gas chamber.
Duncan said complicating that is the state-sanctioned secrecy that surrounds executions.
“She asked me to increase transparency,” he told Capitol Media Services the day after he got a call from the governor’s office last year saying his services were no longer needed.
“And I prepared a report that I thought would do that,” Duncan said. “And it’s ironic that a report that was designed to increase transparency was terminated on the eve of its disclosure.”
Shortly after Duncan was fired, Hobbs announced that the state was now prepared to restart executions, using lethal drugs, under new protocols developed by the Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. Mayes then sought and received a warrant from the Arizona Supreme Court to proceed with the execution of Gunches.
Several states have added the firing squad as an approved execution method in recent years, often prompted by issues with obtaining the needed drugs or concerns over their effectiveness.
A South Carolina man is set to become the first person to die by firing squad in the United States in 15 years under a new state law giving prisoners the choice of lethal injection, a firing squad or the electric chair, according to The Associated Press. Brad Sigmon, 67, will be executed on March 7 for the 2001 baseball bat beating deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s parents.
The measure backed by Kolodin awaits a formal House vote before it moves to the Senate for consideration. If approved there, it will go on the November 2026 ballot with no action needed by Hobbs. Voters will then have the final word.
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