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Verfasser: Gunar
Datum: Samstag, den 21. Februar 2004, um 2:03 Uhr
Betrifft: Senat hat zugestimmt

Der Senat hat dem Entwurf zugestimmt, jedoch noch eine kleine Ergänzung gemacht. Die muss nun wieder vom Repräsentantenhaus abgesegnet werden, bevor der Entwurf dem Gouverneur vorgelegt wird.

Senate votes to shoot down firing squad

By Dan Harrie
The Salt Lake Tribune

    Utah’s firing squad may be called into work four more times and then permanently retired.
    Senators approved legislation Thursday that eliminates the firing squad as an option in state death-penalty cases. The 16-9 vote was enough, with just a single vote over the required chamber majority, to propel House Bill 180 toward the finish line.
    House members must approve a Senate amendment for the bill to be sent to Gov. Olene Walker, who has said she supports putting the firing squad out of business.
    "Sometimes there are crimes that are so heinous" that they merit the death penalty, Walker said through spokeswoman Amanda Covington. "But she thinks there could be some more humane ways, other than a firing squad, to accomplish that."
    Abolishing the firing squad -- which has been used in 40 of 50 formal executions carried out since Mormon pioneers first entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 -- would leave lethal injection as the only option. Injection is the favored method throughout the United States. Utah is one of only three states remaining that still have a firing squad, and is the only one that allows killers to choose between firing squad and lethal injection. Idaho and Oklahoma also have the firing squad on their books as an option if other methods are not viable.
    Even if the legislation is finalized and signed into law by the governor, as expected, the firing squad will not be relegated to the history books right away.
    Four condemned killers on Utah’s death row already have selected death by firing squad, and lawmakers amended out of the bill a provision that would have retroactively changed that. The move came at the request of victims’ families, who feared such a change could add more layers of appeals and delays to those capital cases.
    Killers Ron Lafferty, Ralph Leroy Menzies, Troy Michael Kell and Taberon Dave Honie have requested to die in a hail of bullets when their appeals end. Based on the current status of their appeals, Menzies -- who kidnapped and killed Maurine Hunsaker in 1986 -- may be the next in line to have his death sentence carried out.
    The 1996 firing-squad execution of John Albert Taylor became a worldwide media spectacle -- which bill supporters cited as a primary reason to end the long tradition.
    In years past, the religious concept of blood atonement -- holding that the spilling of blood was required to pay for the worst sins -- made lawmakers reluctant to outlaw the firing squad. Early leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints taught the philosophy of blood atonement, although it never was adopted as an official belief of the church. More than 80 percent of the members of the Utah Legislature belong to the LDS Church.
    Last year the church leaders said in response to the Utah Sentencing Commission that they did not oppose elimination of the firing squad.
    Sen. Greg Bell, R-Fruit Heights, hailed the apparent demise of the firing squad, saying it is "viewed as a Wild West anachronism."
    But Sen. Dave Thomas, R-South Weber, lamented the action.
    "What we’ve just done is weakening the death penalty in the state of Utah," Thomas said.
    "We may feel good, but we’ve just weakened it."
    dharrie@sltrib.com
   
   Days off
   
   * Utah will no longer execute prisoners on holidays or weekends: House members approved Senate Bill 80 Thursday, which blocks executions on Sundays, Mondays or holidays. Previous executions on those days have cost the state about $45,000 in overtime costs. Only Draper GOP Rep. Greg Hughes voted against the bill.

Quelle, Ãœbersetzung

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