Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
04 February 2011
Firing Squad Execution
Mostly with military executions, only a small
number of countries use shooting as a
way of carrying out capital punishment
When Gary Gilmore said the words “Let’s do it” he restarted the American execution industry. It was just after 8 a.m. on January 17, 1977 and Gilmore was hooded, strapped into a chair, and facing a firing squad.
“Let’s do it” was his reply when asked if he had any last words before his execution.
The BBC described his death: “A target attached to his t-
Gilmore refused all attempts to appeal his death sentence for murder and when offered the choice of hanging or shooting he said “I’d rather be shot.”
The story of Gilmore’s life is told in Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize winning book The Executioner’s Song.
Death Penalty Reinstated in America
Gilmore’s execution was the first in the United States since capital punishment had
been brought back in 1976 after a four-
If individual states wanted to enact legislation to bring back execution within their jurisdictions they were free to do so and 37 of the 50 did just that. Since 1976, and up to January 2011 1,238 people have been executed in the United States.
Firing Squad rarely used with Civilians
Capitalpunishment.uk writes that “In most countries, up until the 20th century, shooting was reserved for military personnel with civilians being executed by other methods, mostly hanging.
Chris Hayles
Firing Squad re-
“For some reason, shooting was considered a more honourable death for soldiers than hanging.” Of course, the military also had all the equipment and expertise necessary to carry out the sentence.
It doesn’t always go as planned. Nervous marksmen could easily miss the heart and merely wound. In such cases, the officer in charge of the firing squad would finish the subject off with a pistol shot to the head.
Civilians frequently faced the firing squad in Communist countries and still do today in some spots around the world.
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights quotes a report from Gulf Daily News (December 2006) on a firing squad execution in Bahrain: A Bangladeshi “woman executed for the murder of a Bahraini housewife bled to death for 10 minutes after she was shot in the chest by a firing squad on Monday.”
China Executes more People than any other Nation
Capital punishment is carried out in China more frequently than in any other country. According to the Australian newspaper, The Age (March 2003), “Chinese authorities keep execution numbers a secret, but Western human rights monitors believe it is about 15,000 a year, more than the rest of the world’s judicial executions combined.”
Until recently, almost all these execution were carried out by shooting. The shackled person is made to kneel on the ground, held on either side by police officers. The executioner approaches from behind and places the muzzle of a pistol near the back of the head. At this point, the assistants lean away to avoid catching some of the splatter that is an inevitable side effect.
Executions are usually carried out within minutes of the sentence being passed and often in public. If family members wish to claim the body they must pay for the bullet, otherwise the organs are quickly removed for transplanting.
China understands the public relations disaster that public execution by shooting creates in the rest of the world and is moving towards using lethal injections. However, execution by shooting is still widely used and is seen as a way of keeping the general public docile.
Sources
“1977: Gilmore Executed by Firing Squad.” BBC News.
“How they Died.” Sara Sami, Gulf Daily News, December 13, 2006).
“Chinese Try Mobile Death Vans.” Hamish McDonald, The Age, March 13, 2003.
“Executioners Share Motives, Describe their Roles in Death by Firing Squad.” Robert Kirby, Salt Lake Tribune, September 17, 2010.
© Canada and the World, February 2011
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FIRING SQUAD VOLUNTEERS
In the state of Utah, facing a firing squad is an option offered to those about to be put to death. It has been taken up by three condemned men since 1976 and those who carry out the execution are drawn from the ranks of local police.
In June 2010, Robert Kirby ofThe Salt LakeTribune interviewed several members of the firing squad that put John Albert Taylor to death in January 1996.
One officer selected the other four members and said he looked for men who were mature,
well-
One told Kirby it was “nothing more than getting an order to do something like kicking in a door to serve a warrant.”
Another said, “I don’t think any of us were motivated by a sense of revenge.”
The officers who carried out the job all seemed to be comfortable with their assignment.
“There were 58 confirmed executions by shooting in ten countries during 2010. The U.S. state of Utah had one by firing squad, there was one in Bahrain, and two in Belarus. Equatorial Guinea executed four men by firing squad, Libya carried out 18 executions by firing squad and there were at least five in North Korea and three in Palestine. One man was shot in Somalia, four in Taiwan (the first since 2005) and 19 in the Yemen. Several shooting executions were reported in China but there is no means of knowing how many there actually were.”
Utah Dept of Corrections
In 1985, Ronnie Lee Gardner (above) was convicted of murdering Melvyn Otterstam during a 1984 robbery in Salt Lake City. Gardner also shot and killed attorney Michael Burdell in an escape attempt while being transported from a court hearing. He received a life sentence for the first murder and the death penalty for the second. Court proceedings and appeals delayed Gardner’s execution for 25 years; he was finally put to death by firing squad on June 18, 2010.