The death sentence handed down against Chad Daybell for three grisly Idaho murders has raised the specter that he could face a firing squad under a law enacted last year.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a bill in March 2023 that allows prison officials to have marksmen carry out executions if lethal injection drugs aren't available.
The move came as pharmaceutical companies have increasingly refused to permit their products to be used to kill people instead of save them, the Associated Press reported a the time.
in Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine has postponed a series of scheduled executions, citing an inabiity to obtain lethal injection drugs.
Idaho became the fifth in the nation to authorize death by firing squads, joining Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina, where the state Supreme Court is now considering a legal challenge filed by four death row inmates.
Why was Chad Daybell sentenced to death?
Last Thursday, Daybell was found guilty of conspiracy, first-degree murder and related crimes in the killings of first wife Tammy Daybell and 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old Joshua "JJ" Vallow, the two youngest childen of his second wife, Lori Vallow Daybell.
The self-published author of doomsday fiction showed no emotion as Judge Steven Boyce announced the jury's unanimous decision Saturday to sentence him to death.
Lori Vallow Daybell -- nicknamed the "Doomsday Mom" over her belief that her kids were zombies possessed by evil spirits -- was sentenced last year to life in prison for the slayings.
She still faces trial in Arizona in the fatal shooting of her fourth husband, Charles Vallow, who was JJ's father.
What is the likelihood Chad Daybell will face a firing squad?
Idaho has executed three killers since 1994 and had eight inmates on its death row before Chad Daybell was sentenced to capital punishment.
In February, serial killer Thomas Eugene Creech was supposed to receive a lethal injection for the fatal 1981 beating of a fellow inmate.
But he cheated death when the execution team repeatedly failed to find a vein in the 73-year-old's arms, legs, hands or feet that could be used to administer the deadly drugs.
Although Idaho's firing squad law went into effect oh July 1, 2023, prison officials hadn't yet adopted protocols for the use of a firing squad or created a death chamber where shootings can take place, AP reported at the time.
Officials are working to retrofit Idaho's existing death chamber to accommodate a firing squad but there's no timeline for the project's completion, a spokesperson for the state Department of Correction told HNGN on Monday.
Regardless of when that happens, Chad Daybell is unlikely to be executed any time soon.
Inmates sentenced to capital punishment in the U.S. typically spend more than a decade on death row and more than half have been there in excess of 18 years, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.
How does a firing squad work?
An inmate who's executed by a firing squad is typically bound to a chair with leather straps around the waist and head and then covered by a black hood, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The chair is surrounded by sandbags to absorb the inmate's blood and a doctor uses stethoscope to locate the inmate's heart and mark it with a circular, white cloth target.
Five marksmen are armed with .30 caliber rifles, each loaded with a single round, one of which is a blank.
They open fire through slots in canvas covering an enclosure 20 feet away and the inmate typically dies from blood loss due to rupturing of the heart or a large blood vessel, or tearing of the lungs.
If all shooters miss the mark, the inmate slowly bleeds to death.
Who was the most recent inmate executed by firing squad?
The most recent inmate to face a firing squad in the U.S. was Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, who was executed in Draper, Utah, shortly after midnight on June 18, 2010.
Gardner was sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of lawyer Michael Burdell during an failed attempt to escape from a Salt Lake City courthouse in 1985.
Gardner, who chose to be executed by firing squad, was the first U.S. inmate to die that way since 1996 and only the fourth since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
All of those executions took place in Utah, which has since banned firing squads except for inmates sentenced before May 2004 or if lethal injection drugs aren't available.
