Execution by remote control: Idaho policy becomes barbarity | Opinion

Idaho’s plans to build a special chamber to execute prisoners via firing squad may include some sort of remote-controlled system to pull the trigger.

According to a story by the Idaho Statesman’s Kevin Fixler, the state is moving ahead with construction of an execution chamber at the prison complex south of Boise to accommodate shooting condemned prisoners to death.

The chamber is expected to be operational by next summer, just in time for a new law that goes into effect in July 2026 that prioritizes a firing squad as the execution method of first choice in this state.

Lethal injection will remain the backup option, but Idaho will become the first state in the U.S. to have a firing squad as the primary method for carrying out a death sentence.

In an acknowledgement of the brutality of shooting someone to death as an execution method, state officials admitted that part of the reason for a remote-controlled device is to ensure an execution has “minimal involvement from our staff,” according to an Idaho Department of Correction spokesperson.

But no amount of separation can diminish the barbaric nature of this act.

Details of firing squad executions bear that out.

According to a media witness account of a recent execution in South Carolina, three riflemen stood 10 feet from the condemned prisoner, who was strapped to a chair. A hood was placed over the prisoner’s head and a white target with a red bull’s-eye over his heart. Without notice or a countdown, the shooters opened fire, and each of them shot a single round at the target, according to the account in The New York Times.

The witness said the target over the prisoner’s heart disappeared, the prisoner’s body flinched, as if electrocuted, and “a jagged red spot about the size of a small fist appeared where (the prisoner) was shot. His chest moved two or three times.”

Add to this the untested and uncertain method of using a remote control to pull the trigger.

Idaho’s most sanctimonious legislator, Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, sounds downright cavalier about the idea of a remote-controlled firing squad.

“That’s just one more thing that could go awry if the button doesn’t work on the mechanical portion,” Skaug told Fixler in a phone interview. “But my understanding is that there will be a backup firing squad — old-school with rifles ready to go — if there’s something that mechanically fails.”

Perhaps Skaug should be the one required to push the button or stand ready with a rifle ready to go — “old school” — to shoot another human being through the heart.

Some have suggested using the military to fatally shoot prisoners. But do you know of any veterans who have come home from a war unaffected by the experience of killing someone, even if it is “the enemy?”

Considerations should also be made for the effect on the people who have to clean up the mess after an execution by firing squad — remote control or not.

We understand, acknowledge and make no attempt to downplay the brutal nature of the heinous crimes committed by the people who have landed on death row (assuming that they have not arrived there via wrongful conviction, which has happened in the past and could again).

We also recognize and acknowledge that the death penalty is the law of the land in Idaho. If finding drugs to carry out lethal injection becomes impossible, it effectively renders the law moot. So, the argument goes, it’s necessary to come up with some other method to carry out the law.

But as Idaho persists in its pursuit of the firing squad and the increasingly brutal methodology of execution, we have to question the motives.

We understand the quest for justice, and some espouse the biblical “eye for an eye” notion of justice (although the Bible later repudiates that notion).

Some even cheer for the firing squad because it’s necessarily a more brutal execution method. Indeed, we heard these calls in the most recent case, the University of Idaho killings.

But is that a desire for justice or a quest for vengeance?

Life in prison fulfills the promise of justice as well as the protection of the community; vengeance only serves to make us more like the killer, when we should be better.

As for deterrence, the certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment, according to the National Institute of Justice, and, according to the National Academy of Sciences, “Research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment is uninformative about whether capital punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates.”

With the expense ($1 million just to build the chamber) and lengths the state is going to, it would seem that the use of the firing squad is based more on vengeance.

And as the method of execution grows more barbaric in Idaho, it appears that ours is a bloodthirsty vengeance.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.

This story was originally published September 4, 2025 at 4:00 AM.