Idaho on July 1 became the first state in America to designate the firing squad as its primary method of carrying out the death penalty, a shift driven by years of pharmaceutical obstruction that left the state unable to reliably obtain lethal injection drugs.
The change, rooted in House Bill 186 passed by Idaho lawmakers in 2023, flips the state's execution hierarchy. Lethal injection, once the default, is now the backup. Three volunteer police marksmen, their identities kept confidential, will carry out sentences at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, where the state spent roughly $1.2 million retrofitting a cell block and purchasing rifles.
No execution has yet been carried out under the new protocol. But with eight people sitting on Idaho's death row, seven men and one woman, the machinery is now in place, and the state that last executed anyone in June 2012 has made clear it intends to resume.
The Idaho Department of Correction's firing squad procedures, detailed in a USA Today report, lay out a methodical process. The condemned person is seated in an execution chair. EKG monitors are attached. A target is placed over the heart. The inmate may request an eye covering and is offered a mild sedative.
Three marksmen stand approximately 10 yards away, positioned behind a protective wall with a one-foot opening. Each carries a.308 caliber assault-style rifle loaded with a single live round,.308 or 7.62, 110 grain, in a separate magazine. The firing squad team totals six: three shooters, two alternates, and a team leader. A coroner pronounces death.
The Department of Correction has said it will not release blueprints of the retrofitted execution chamber, citing safety and security protocols.
Idaho did not arrive here by preference. It arrived here because the pharmaceutical industry systematically cut off the supply chain for lethal injection drugs, leaving states scrambling for alternatives.
Drug manufacturers began blocking their products from execution use starting in 2010. By 2016, Pfizer announced it would prevent states from purchasing its drugs for lethal injections, a move that shut down what was described as the last open-market source of execution drugs in the country. States that still wanted to carry out lawfully imposed death sentences were left with shrinking options and growing legal exposure.
Idaho felt the consequences directly. The Washington Examiner reported that the Idaho Department of Correction had to cancel a scheduled execution in November 2022 because it could not obtain the necessary lethal injection chemicals. That failure underscored the fragility of relying on a method whose supply depended on the cooperation of corporations that had no interest in cooperating.
Then came the botched execution attempt on death row inmate Thomas Eugene Creech in 2024. The New York Post reported that medical personnel spent roughly an hour trying to establish an IV line and failed, leaving the execution incomplete. That episode became a catalyst. Republican Rep. Bruce Skaug, the bill's sponsor, pointed to the Creech debacle as proof that lethal injection had become unreliable.
Idaho first authorized firing squads as a backup method in 2023 through House Bill 186. But the Creech incident accelerated the push to go further. A subsequent bill elevated the firing squad from fallback to primary method.
When the Idaho Senate passed the measure, Republican Sen. Doug Ricks framed the logic in blunt terms. As AP News reported, Ricks said: "One thing about this method, it's pretty sure. It's not going to be something that gets done part way."
Not every Republican agreed. Sen. Daniel Foreman, a retired police officer and Air Force combat veteran, warned during debate that "the consequences of a botched firing execution are more graphic, more mentally, psychologically devastating" than other botched execution methods. The bill passed anyway.
Fox News reported that Governor Brad Little signed the legislation, making Idaho the only state in the nation with firing squad as the preferred execution method.
The law carries immediate practical weight. Bryan Kohberger, charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary in the 2022 killings of four University of Idaho students, faces the death penalty if convicted. Prosecutors have said they will seek it. If a death sentence is imposed, Kohberger would face execution by firing squad under the new protocol.
That connection has not been lost on the victims' families. Shannon Gray, the family attorney, told reporters that the decision on whether to pursue the death penalty would be "made by all the families", a reminder that behind the procedural debate sit real people who lost children to a violent crime.
Idaho is not entirely alone in permitting firing squads. Four other states, South Carolina, Utah, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, authorize them as an alternative method. South Carolina conducted three firing squad executions in 2025, including the last such execution in the country in November of that year. But none of those states has made the firing squad its primary protocol. Idaho stands alone on that point.
The shift also coincides with Idaho's decision to add child rape to its list of capital crimes, a move noted by Breitbart, making it one of only three states, alongside Florida and Tennessee, to treat that offense as death-eligible. That expansion could force the Supreme Court to revisit its 2008 ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana, where a 5-4 majority held that the death penalty for child rapists violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Idaho, in other words, is not merely adjusting its execution method. It is expanding the scope of capital punishment while the rest of the country drifts in the opposite direction.
Critics of the death penalty will frame Idaho's move as a step backward. But the state's predicament deserves honest examination. Idaho did not abandon lethal injection because it wanted a more dramatic method. It abandoned lethal injection because the pharmaceutical industry, with no democratic mandate, no legislative authority, and no constitutional standing, effectively vetoed a lawful punishment imposed by duly elected legislatures and upheld by courts.
When Pfizer and its peers decided they would no longer allow their products to be used for executions, they did not change the law. They changed the logistics. States were left holding valid death sentences they could not carry out. The result was a years-long limbo in which condemned inmates sat on death row, victims' families waited for closure that never came, and the justice system looked feeble.
Idaho's last execution was in June 2012, more than fourteen years ago. Eight people remain on its death row. The state chose to solve the problem rather than accept permanent paralysis.
Whether one supports or opposes capital punishment, the underlying question is straightforward: should private corporations be able to nullify the enforcement of laws passed by elected officials and upheld by courts? Idaho's answer is no. The firing squad is the instrument of that answer.
When the system meant to carry out justice breaks down, a state that finds another way isn't being barbaric. It's being serious.
