The good news: The State of Idaho will place a pause on any future executions of death row inmates until July 2026.
The bad news: That’s because it will take that long to retrofit the execution chamber in the prison to accommodate the newly-prioritized method of execution by firing squad and train the executioners.
The move comes in an announcement from the Department of Corrections1 that all executions will be taken offline while the 6-to-9-month retrofit is completed. That move comes in response to the Idaho Republican supermajority in the legislature passing and the Republican governor signing House Bill 37, which designated firing squad as the preferred method of execution in Idaho.
They passed that bill because, for the first time, Idaho failed to successfully kill a death row inmate, the evil Thomas Creech. The state spent almost an hour trying to kill him by lethal injection, but the executioner couldn’t find a vein.
It’s also been difficult for Idaho to secure possession of the drugs needed for lethal injection. Unsurprisingly, pharmaceutical companies don’t want to be known for their products killing people. This has led to prison officials trying to make roadside drug deals for the lethal injection drugs.
Bullets, however, are cheap and plentiful in Idaho. Plus, that execution chamber ought to be finished in time for the 4th of July. What better way to celebrate what America has become in 250 years than to line someone up and shoot them dead in front of witnesses?
As just as it might be to execute someone like Thomas Creech, I can still never support any death penalty in any justice system that isn’t 100% infallible.
1 I’ve always loved that euphemism. It sounds like a room at a publishing house full of editors with red pencils. Like humans kept in cages are some freshman’s English Lit essay riddled with incongruent verb tenses and misspelled words.
