BOISE, ID – Idaho will become the only state to fatally shoot death row inmates as its main execution method.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little on Wednesday morning signed into law House Bill 37, which will make the firing squad the primary death penalty in Idaho.

Both chambers of the Idaho Legislature widely approved the bill this year, with only three Republican state lawmakers joining all 15 Democratic lawmakers to oppose it. The Senate passed the bill on a 28-7 vote last week, a month after the House passed it on a 58-11 vote.

The bill takes effect July 1, 2026.

Nine people are on death row in Idaho, according to the Idaho Department of Correction.

Only five states allow firing squads for executions. But the firing squad isn’t the primary death penalty method in any of those states, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Since 2023, Idaho has allowed firing squads as a backup execution method, behind lethal injection.

The bill directs the Idaho Department of Correction director to develop firing squad procedures.

The bill was cosponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa; Sen. Doug Ricks, R-Rexburg; and over a dozen other House Republican lawmakers.

Skaug has told lawmakers Idaho’s firing squad execution method would be “mechanized.” Idaho Department of Correction spokesperson Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic told the Sun in February the agency is considering using “a remote-operated weapons system alongside traditional firing squad methods.” But the agency had not finalized its policies and procedures, she said.

She told the Sun on Wednesday the agency didn’t have updates to share on its method of carrying out firing squad executions. But the final policies and procedures will be publicly available, she said.

Supporters of the bill say firing squad is humane execution method

Supporters of the bill say the firing squad is a humane execution method. Using firing squads as the main execution method, supporters say, would avoid Idaho’s issues obtaining lethal injection chemicals and dealing with decades of legal appeals that have delayed executions.

“At first when you hear firing squad, if you’re not familiar with the history, you think ‘well that sounds barbaric’ is what I’ve heard from some,” Skaug told a House committee in February. “It is certain. It is quick. And it brings justice for the victims and their families in a more expeditious manner than other types.”

In 2024, Idaho canceled its last scheduled execution attempt of death row inmate Thomas Creech after officials said they failed to establish an IV line to administer lethal injection chemicals, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported.

Some Idaho lawmakers recited a 2017 remark in a dissent from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, widely regarded as a liberal justice, who cast executions by firing squads as more humane.

“In addition to being near instant, death by shooting may also be comparatively painless,” Sotomayor wrote, according to the Associated Press.

Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Viola, a combat veteran and retired police officer, was the only Idaho Senate Republican to vote against the bill.

“The claims that it’s instantaneous. Well, yes — sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. And if you’ve ever seen that, I think you would change your mind on how you’re about to vote,” he told Idaho senators in debate on the bill.

Firing squad was already allowed in Idaho. Bill would make lethal injection the back-up execution method.

In 2023, Idaho passed a law to allow firing squads for executions. But that law only allowed firing squads as a back-up execution method when lethal injection — the primary execution method in Idaho law — is unavailable.

Under the new bill signed into law, lethal injection will become Idaho’s backup execution method.

Only five states — Idaho, Utah, South Carolina, Oklahoma and Mississippi — allow firing squads for execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

In the United States, 144 executions have been carried out by firing squads, according to a 2016 law review article.

Since the death penalty became reinstated in the 1970s, Utah is the only state to have executed people by firing squad, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Utah has executed three prisoners by firing squad since 1977, with the most recent firing squad execution in 2010, the Associated Press reported.

But last week, Brad Sigmon became the first inmate in South Carolina executed by firing squad — the first person executed by firing squad in the U.S. since 2010, the South Carolina Daily Gazette reported. Sigmon requested he be killed by firing squad over concerns about whether lethal injection is truly a painless death, his attorney say.

Renovating Idaho’s execution chamber to allow for firing squads will likely cost more than the $750,000 lawmakers previously appropriated, lawmakers say. But Skaug has said any extra funds would come from money already in the Department of Correction budget.

This story first appeared on Idaho Capital Sun.