Judges could no longer review Idaho prison execution decisions under passed bill
The development of Idaho’s execution procedures by the director of state prisons will be shielded from the public and not subject to court review under a bill the Legislature sent to the governor’s desk.
With a near-unanimous vote, the Idaho Senate approved House Bill 803, which the bill sponsors called a “technical correction” as the state transitions to a firing squad as its lead method for carrying out the death penalty starting this summer. The bill adds language to extend the same confidentiality protections to members of the execution team who participate in a firing squad execution as those who would have been involved in a lethal injection.
“This just simply makes the changes needed here to add that for those who would carry out for firing squad,” Sen. Doug Ricks, R-Rexburg, said on the Senate floor Friday.
Last year, the Legislature passed a bill to prioritize a firing squad as the state’s primary execution method. Gov. Brad Little signed it, and the law takes effect July 1. The Idaho Department of Correction is renovating its execution chamber to meet that deadline.
But House Bill 803 also contains language to exempt from judicial review the IDOC director’s decision-making concerning changes to execution procedures under the Idaho Administrative Procedure Act. The law provides for oversight of state executive agencies and their actions by the legislative and judicial branches.
The administrative law already exempts the three-member Board of Correction from such review, but the question over whether that also covered the prison system’s director is at the center of an active Idaho Supreme Court appeal from a death row prisoner. A district judge in Ada County ruled last year that it was the Legislature’s original intent to do so, but prisoner Gerald Pizzuto appealed.
IDOC Director Bree Derrick testified Tuesday, March 24, in a Senate committee that final execution procedures are posted to the agency’s website and remain available to the public. The proposed change in law does not prevent constitutional challenges in court over those protocols, she said.
Pizzuto, 70, is the state’s second-longest serving death row prisoner. He was sentenced to death nearly 40 years ago after his convictions for killing two people in a 1985 robbery north of McCall. He was challenging the prison director’s changes to the lethal injection protocol in 2024 as “arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion.”
The Attorney General’s Office represents IDOC and Derrick in the lawsuit. The office was uninvolved in creation of the bill sponsored in the House by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, an Attorney General’s Office spokesperson previously told the Idaho Statesman.
The Supreme Court appeal has been fully briefed but oral arguments are not yet scheduled. If signed by Little, the law would also take effect July 1 and likely make Pizzuto’s case moot, ending his appeal.
