NEW YORK
The U.S. state of Utah will reinstate the use of firing squad as a form of execution when drugs needed for lethal injection are not available.
Governor Gary Herbert signed the measure into law on Monday, making Utah the only U.S. state to use firing squad as a method of capital punishment.
Although lethal injection is the primary method of execution in the country, states have been in short supply in recent years as European pharmaceutical companies refused to sell the drugs as an objection to capital punishment.
Utah had banned execution by firing squad in 2004, but a handful of death inmates who had been sentenced prior to that year could still opt for being shot to death.
Ronnie Lee Gardner, a convicted killer who had spent almost 25 years on death row, was the last inmate to be executed by firing squad in 2010.
It was the third firing squad execution in the U.S. — all of them in Utah.
