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Thread: Wyoming Capital Punishment News

  1. #1
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    Wyo. lawmaker proposes firing squad for executions

    CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — A Wyoming lawmaker is pushing to allow use of the firing squad to execute condemned state inmates if constitutional problems or other issues ever prevented the state from using lethal injection.

    Sen. Bruce Burns, R-Sheridan, said Monday that state law currently calls for using a gas chamber if lethal injection is unavailable.

    "The state of Wyoming doesn't have a gas chamber currently, an operating gas chamber, so the procedure and expense to build one would be impractical to me," said Burns, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    "I consider frankly the gas chamber to be cruel and unusual, so I went with firing squad because they also have it in Utah," Burns said. He's introduced the bill for consideration in the legislative session that starts Feb. 10 in Cheyenne.

    "One of the reasons I chose firing squad as opposed to any other form of execution is because frankly it's one of the cheapest for the state," Burns said. "The expense of building a gas chamber I think would be prohibitive when you consider how many people would be executed by it, and even the cost of gallows."

    Burns said his bill addressed the possibility that the state could have to find a substitute for using lethal injection because a number of states are running short of the chemicals used for lethal injection.

    In Missouri, for example, the state auditor is undertaking a probe of the Missouri Department of Corrections over its use of a new death penalty drug. That state for years had used a three-drug blend to perform executions until pharmaceutical companies stopped selling those drugs to prisons.

    Missouri has executed two inmates in recent months using the sedative pentobarbital and plans a third execution later this month. The drug comes from a compounding pharmacy in Oklahoma not licensed to do business in Missouri.

    The pace of inmate executions is much slower in Wyoming, which has only one inmate on death row and last executed an inmate in 1992.

    Inmate Dale Wayne Eaton, 68, is challenging the constitutionality of the death sentence he received in 2004 for the rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell of Billings, Mont. The Wyoming Supreme Court already has upheld Eaton's conviction, but a federal court has put the execution on hold for the past several years while it considers his appeal.

    Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., said Monday he believes Wyoming could face constitutional challenges if it tried to use the firing squad as its only method of execution.

    Dieter said Utah has offered inmates the choice of being executed by firing squad but said the state is phasing out the punishment. He said mandating the use of the firing squad if lethal injection were unavailable, as Burns seeks to do, would be a different matter.

    "That I think would raise concerns in the federal courts, perhaps the state courts, about whether and unusual, perhaps a cruel and unusual punishment is being inflicted," Dieter said. "I don't know how the ultimate ruling would come down, but I think there would be delays as that case got considered and it might even go up to the Supreme Court. This would be unusual. This is not what Utah has done."

    http://www.seattlepi.com/news/articl...ns-5139623.php
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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Firing squad off the table in Wyoming

    The Wyoming Senate has voted not to consider a bill to allow the use of firing squads to execute condemned inmates.

    Lethal injection is the method laid out in state law, with the gas chamber as a backup.

    The bill's sponsor, Republican state Sen. Bruce Burns, says states have had trouble getting drugs for lethal injection.

    Wyoming doesn't have a gas chamber and he questioned the expense of building one for infrequent executions.

    The bill would have required approval by two-thirds of senators for introduction. It failed Tuesday on a vote of 17 in favor, 13 opposed.

    Wyoming has one inmate on death row. Dale Wayne Eaton is appealing the death sentence he received in 2004 in the rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell of Billings, Mont.

    http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-wo...-table-wyoming
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    In the interim, legislators discuss death penalty methods

    By LAURA HANCOCK
    The Casper Star-Tribune

    CASPER, Wyo. — A legislative committee will continue discussing Wyoming's options to execute inmates convicted of capital crimes in the coming months.

    Sen. Bruce Burns, R-Sheridan, believes the state needs to review its death penalty options in light of problems other states are having acquiring drugs for lethal injections.

    Wyoming doesn’t store lethal injection drugs, said Mark Horan, spokesman for the Department of Corrections. Like other states, it has to obtain them before an execution.

    “It’s an issue, really, across the country,” he said.

    The drugs used in lethal injection, the primary method of death penalty in Wyoming, are becoming scarce because the European Union has banned pharmaceutical companies in member countries from exporting them for executions. Burns wants to look at other forms of execution in the Cowboy State. He sponsored a bill in the 2014 session to make death by firing squad the alternative form of execution, but it failed an early vote to earn more discussion during the session.

    Now the topic will be studied by the Joint Judiciary Interim Committee, which has meetings tentatively scheduled for May, July and September. The Legislature’s Management Council, which assigns topics for discussion, has ordered the Wyoming Department of Corrections to provide information about whether the executions law needed to be amended.

    According to state law, execution must be carried out by an injection of a barbiturate alone or in combination with a chemical that would cause paralysis and potassium chloride or other substances that would cause death. The drugs are administered continuously and intravenously until a physician pronounces the inmate dead.

    If a court finds lethal injection unconstitutional, executions can be carried out with lethal gas, the law states.

    Burns believes firing squads are the cheapest and most effective alternative to the death penalty, he said.

    Burns doesn’t like hanging because it’s too susceptible to mistakes, he said. To properly hang someone, an inmate’s weight and the amount of drop must be perfectly calculated, he said.

    “They’ve miscalculated that a number of times, either dropping too far and beheading them or not breaking their neck and a person chokes to death,” he said, explaining that an inmate’s neck must break to die.

    Burns’ bill would have substituted firing squads for gas chambers, since the state doesn’t have a working chamber.

    “We do have one that was used three or four times that was sitting in Rawlins at the old Frontier Prison,” he said. “But the expense of building an operating one would be exorbitant.”

    Electric chairs are costly, too, Burns said.

    Burns believes the graphic nature of the death penalty conversation could draw some Wyomingites to committee meetings to speak out against the court-ordered practice.

    “But I’m going on the assumption that the majority of people in Wyoming want to maintain the death penalty, for a couple of reasons,” he said. “Sometimes you have crimes that are so heinous the death penalty is called for, and the second reason is the state of Wyoming doesn’t execute people very often. We haven’t executed a person in over 20 years.”

    On Friday, the Pew Research Center released the results of a 2013 survey that found the majority of Americans — 55 percent — supported the death penalty, but support had declined since 2011, when it was 62 percent. The survey results did not break down death penalty support by state.

    The last execution was in 1992, Mark Hopkinson.

    Dale Wayne Eaton is the only person on Wyoming's death row. He was sentenced to death in 2004 for the rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell of Billings.

    http://billingsgazette.com/news/stat...#ixzz2xjPOcBKn

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    Wyoming Corrections wants execution options

    CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - Wyoming Department of Corrections officials say the state must consider alternatives to lethal injection as a means to execute condemned inmates.

    Corrections Department officials are set to urge lawmakers to consider alternative forms of execution at a meeting of the Legislature's Joint Judiciary Committee in Rawlins next month.

    Many states have had problems getting execution drugs, and several inmates in other states have asserted that uncertainty about the source of drugs violates their rights.

    The Wyoming Legislature earlier this year rejected considering a bill that would have specified the state use firing squads if lethal drugs weren't available.

    Wyoming has one inmate on death row. Dale Wayne Eaton is appealing the death sentence he received in 2004 in the rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell of Billings, Mont.

    http://www.localnews8.com/news/Wyomi...tions/25644886

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    Wyoming lawmakers mull firing squad for executions

    Prompted by shortages of drugs for lethal injections, Wyoming lawmakers are considering changing state law to permit execution of condemned inmates by firing squad.

    A Wyoming legislative committee has directed its staff to draft a firing-squad bill for consideration ahead of next year's legislative session, which starts in January.

    Lawmakers in Utah also may consider a return to firing squads for civilian executions. A Republican state lawmaker there recently announced that he intends to introduce firing-squad legislation in his state's next legislative session, which likewise starts in January.

    Utah outlawed execution by firing squad in 2004 but kept it as an option for inmates convicted before that time. It last executed an inmate by firing squad in 2010.

    Bob Lampert, director of the Wyoming Department of Corrections, told members of the Wyoming Legislature's Joint Interim Judiciary Committee last week in Rawlins that drugs for lethal injection have become increasingly difficult to obtain.

    "In the event that we had an execution scheduled and we couldn't carry it out as a result of lack of substances, I suggested to the Joint Judiciary that we may want to consider having an alternate means of execution, such as the firing squad," Lampert said Wednesday.

    Current state law specifies that Wyoming execute condemned inmates in a gas chamber, which the state doesn't currently have, as a backup to lethal injection only if lethal injection were found to be unconstitutional. Existing state law doesn't address how the state should proceed in response to a drug shortage.

    Lethal injection is becoming increasingly difficult for states to perform as pharmaceutical companies withhold drug compounds that states traditionally have used. Some inmates have raised constitutional challenges as states have turned to untried compounds.

    Wyoming has no execution drugs on hand, Lampert said.

    Last month, Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack more than 40 minutes after corrections officials there started trying to administer drugs at his execution.

    President Barack Obama called the Lockett incident deeply troubling and said he had asked his attorney general to review the application of the death penalty.

    Sen. Bruce Burns, R-Sheridan, proposed a bill earlier this year to change state law to allow the use of firing squads. He's a member of the judiciary committee.

    Burns said Wednesday that the committee intends to consider the firing-squad approach at its next meeting in July. In this year's legislative session, his bill to authorize execution by firing squad failed in an introductory vote.

    Burns said fellow lawmakers increasingly seem to recognize that the state needs to act.

    Burns said he believes firing squads would be preferable to lethal injection, in which inmates feel the needle and then have to wait for drugs to take effect.

    Wyoming has only one inmate on death row. Dale Wayne Eaton, 69, is pressing a federal appeal of his death sentence in 2004 for the murder of Lisa Marie Kimmell, 18, of Billings, Montana.

    Cheyenne lawyer Terry Harris represents Eaton in his federal appeal. An attempt to reach Harris for comment Wednesday wasn't immediately successful.

    Rep. Stephen Watt, R-Rock Springs, serves on the Joint Interim Judiciary Committee. He said he intends to sponsor a bill in the state's coming legislative session to do away with the death penalty entirely, but he doesn't expect it will get much support.

    Watt is a former Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper who was severely injured in a gunfight on the job years ago.

    "The biggest and probably the most important one is probably my Christian beliefs that it's wrong for man to kill man," Watt said Wednesday of his opposition to the death penalty.

    "The second one is because of technology. All the time, we're coming up with more and more technology, and we're finding innocent people that have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to die. It would be a tragedy for one innocent person to die."

    Watt said he doesn't consider the firing squad to be a more humane alternative to lethal injection.

    "I've been shot," he said. "And I don't care how quickly death comes from firing squad. It still hurts, and it's still terrifying. And I think it's cruel and unusual."

    http://trib.com/news/state-and-regio...c8f361d5f.html

  6. #6
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    Wyoming firing squad execution bill released in draft form

    A state legislative committee will consider a draft bill next week that would permit execution by firing squad.

    The draft bill states lethal injection would remain the method of execution, but if lethal injection is unconstitutional or can’t be performed within the time prescribed by the law, then the death sentence would be carried out by firing squad.

    Current law states that lethal gas is the alternative method of execution, but the state doesn’t have a working gas chamber.

    The draft bill is a result of shortages of the lethal injection drug. Many pharmaceutical companies have stopped making the drug.

    Members of the Joint Interim Judiciary Committee will discuss the draft bill July 17 in Newcastle, said Rep. Keith Gingery, R-Jackson, the committee’s chairman.

    “I doubt we’ll vote on it,” he said. “We’ll probably vote on it in our third meeting in Laramie. This is so the committee can see what the language would be. I know there are some members of the committee who would like to see the state give up the death penalty altogether. I’m sure that discussion will come up in Newcastle.”

    If the committee votes to approve the bill, it could be introduced in the 2015 legislative session.

    Sen. Bruce Burns, R-Sheridan, sponsored a bill during the session that ended in March, but it did not receive the required two-thirds vote to be assigned a committee. It failed on Feb. 11. Burns advocated a firing squad because it is more affordable than a new gas chamber. An old chamber in the Frontier Prison in Rawlins was used three or four times and isn’t up to date. The Legislature’s Management Council, comprised of leadership in both parties, decided the Judiciary Committee should study the topic further.

    Rep. Stephen Watt, R-Rock Springs, opposes the death penalty “First of all because of my Christian beliefs,” he said. “I believe God is the one who says when a person dies, and not man, regardless of what you’ve done. And the second thing is with technology, we are finding there are innocent people on death row and there are even people who have been executed that were innocent. I think that’s horrible.”

    http://billingsgazette.com/news/stat...#ixzz36zD5pnhF
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  7. #7
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    Lawmakers to debate ending death penalty

    By LAURA HANCOCK
    The Casper Star-Tribune

    CASPER, Wyo. — A state legislative committee will discuss next week whether to sponsor a bill in the 2015 session that would abolish the death penalty.

    The draft bill may not win approval in the Joint Judiciary Interim Committee on Sept. 11, but the discussion may inspire lawmakers to individually sponsor it next year, legislators said.

    Lawmakers have been debating alternatives to lethal injection since many pharmaceutical companies began restricting sales of the drugs to prisons throughout the United States.

    Next week’s meeting is at the University of Wyoming. The committee will consider draft bills to end the death penalty and to make firing squad the alternative method to executions when lethal injection is not possible, Gingery said.

    Rep. Keith Gingery expects discussion over repealing capital punishment in Wyoming to be lively.

    Lively discussion

    “People are interested in that particular bill,” he said.

    Chesie Lee, executive director of the Wyoming Association of Churches, will speak in favor of repealing the death penalty.

    “Revenge is not what we’re called to do,” she said. “It’s not that we oppose punishment alogether, but revenge is not the answer.”

    Current law allows the death penalty as a sentence for first-degree murder.

    Gingery ordered the committee’s nonpartisan staff to draft a bill at a July meeting in Newcastle. Reps. Stephen Watt, R-Rock Springs, and Marti Halverson, R- Etna, supported the effort the most among the committee members, Gingery said.

    In May, the committee ordered staff members to draft the firing squad bill.

    Final committee discussion

    The meeting will be the last time the Judiciary Committee will discuss it before next year’s session, which convenes Jan. 13, Gingery said.

    “My guess is we will vote out the firing squad one; that will move on,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll get enough votes for getting rid of the death penalty. That’s our last meeting of the year, so it either happens or it doesn’t happen.

    “By the Judiciary Committee having this discussion as a committee, it might encourage Steve Watt and Marti Halverson in bringing this bill forward,” Gingery said.

    Halverson didn’t return a message from the Star-Tribune. Watt is up for re-election Nov. 4. If he wins and the committee rejects sponsorship of the bill, he said he would sponsor it.

    Watt opposes the death penalty for religious reasons and out of concern that the wrong people could be executed.

    Death by firing squad shouldn’t be an alternative execution method, said Watt, who was shot five times as a trooper with the Wyoming Highway Patrol in 1982.

    “It hurts,” he said about being shot. “I don’t care that it’s a fraction of a second. It hurts tremendously. It’s cruel and unusual to subject another person to that.”

    http://billingsgazette.com/news/stat...#ixzz3CPqMuHvZ

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    Firing Squad Bill Advances in Wyoming

    A Wyoming legislative panel on Friday advanced a bill that would authorize the state to use a firing squad to execute inmates on death-row if prison officials fail to obtain drugs for lethal injections.

    Meeting in Laramie, the interim Joint Judiciary Committee advanced a firing-squad bill for the full Legislature to consider when it convenes early next year. The committee rejected another bill that would have called for the state to repeal the death penalty altogether.

    Steve Lindly, deputy director of the Wyoming Department of Corrections, told lawmakers that states across the country are finding it increasingly difficult to find drugs to carry out lethal-injection executions. Current Wyoming law sets the gas chamber as the state’s fallback position only if the courts found lethal injection unconstitutional. But the law doesn’t address what to do if the necessary drugs are simply unavailable. The state doesn’t have a gas chamber.

    Wyoming is among a few states that have considered bringing back largely abandoned execution methods like the firing squad. Lawmakers have explored alternatives as the most common method of lethal injection has come under more scrutiny and death-penalty states have struggled to procure drugs to carry out death sentences. Recent flawed executions, including a nearly two-hour lethal injection in Arizona, have intensified the debate.

    No state employs firing squads as a primary execution method, but Utah and Oklahoma permit death-row inmates to be shot under certain, narrow circumstances, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which collects and aggregates data on capital punishment.

    U.S. appeals court Judge Alex Kozinski recently suggested in an opinion that states should consider switching to the “more primitive” but “foolproof” firing squad as their primary method of executing death-row inmates.

    Wyoming, which has executed one inmate since 1976, has one prisoner on death row, Dale Wayne Eaton, who was sentenced to death in 2004 for murdering an 18-year-old woman.

    Rep. Stephen Watt, a former Wyoming Highway Patrol officer who lost an eye when he was shot by a suspected armed robber in the early 1980s, tried to persuade lawmakers to abandon the firing squad idea.

    “We’re all operating under the assumption that this is going to be instantaneous death. What happens if everybody misses?” Mr. Watt said, according to the AP.

    http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2014/09/12/...es-in-wyoming/
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    Committee gives its approval to use firing squad for executions if needed

    Following a spate of issues nationwide with condemned inmates and the lethal injection process, a committee of Wyoming lawmakers gave their stamp of approval to bring back the firing squad.

    Proposed changes to state law would include removing references to the use of the gas chamber as a backup means of execution if lethal injection was not available, and substitute the use of firing squads in its place. With the state unable to obtain the drug cocktail used in lethal injections, the secondary means of execution could soon be utilized.

    The draft measure was approved by a 10-3 vote of the Wyoming Joint Judiciary Interim Committee in their scheduled meeting in Laramie last Friday.

    “If the method of execution of the sentence of death as provided … is held unconstitutional or if the sentencing court finds execution by lethal injection cannot be performed by prescribed law, the sentence of death shall be executed by firing squad within the time prescribed by law unless for cause shown, the court or the governor extends the time,” reads the draft measure.

    The legislation, already described as the Firing Squad Bill, would give the state more options to choose from should the long-standard chemical injection process prove unavailable when needed.

    Wyoming has not executed an inmate since the 1992 lethal injection of mass murderer Mark Hopkinson. The gas chamber has not been used in the state since 1965.

    Increasingly lethal injection, often regarded as the most humane form of capital punishment, is being seen by some as anything but. Recently, an Ohio man, Dennis McGuire, lingered for 26 minutes after being injected.

    The reason for his prolonged demise? McGuire was given a two-drug cocktail, which included a sedative and a painkiller, both of which had never been used in an execution.

    The reason these new drugs were used? Traditional drugs have been hard to come by thanks to voluntary embargoes orchestrated by European pharmaceutical companies that object to having their drugs, e.g. pentobarbital, used to kill inmates. This had led not only Wyoming, but also Missouri and Utah to consider firing squads as more humane than the current alternatives.

    Some on the panel did not agree that a return to the firing squad would guarantee a quick and painless execution of sentence upon those condemned.

    “We’re all operating under the assumption that this is going to be instantaneous death,” said Rep. Stephen Watt, R-Rock Springs. “What happens if everybody misses?”

    This controversy over the potential future use of firing squads has not escaped the attention of the courts.

    In December 2013, Chief Federal Judge Alex Kozinski, over the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote a dissenting opinion in the case of a convicted Arizona murderer over the use of lethal injection. Kozinski, argued the method was “misguided” and contended that more primitive but foolproof means of execution should be considered preferable.

    “Sure, firing squads can be messy, but if we are willing to carry out executions, we should not shield ourselves from the reality that we are shedding human blood,” wrote Kozinski.

    Wyoming’s only current death row inmate, 68-year old Dale Eaton, saw his legal team file a 300-page challenge to the state’s death penalty verdict in his case. Convicted of the 1988 rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell, a date for Eaton’s execution has not been set.

    Wyoming’s bill will now head to the floor of the legislature for debate, and could pass as early as January 2015.

    http://www.guns.com/2014/09/15/commi...ons-if-needed/
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  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Heidi View Post
    “We’re all operating under the assumption that this is going to be instantaneous death,” said Rep. Stephen Watt, R-Rock Springs. “What happens if everybody misses?”
    Is he serious?

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