Wyoming may bring back the firing squad to kill its one death row inmate

With lethal injection drugs hard to come by nowadays, Wyoming is considering a law that would allow it to re-up an outdated method of execution: the firing squad.

A legislative committee is drafting a bill that would allow the state to execute death row inmates with guns, and it's expected the bill will be ready to introduce before the next session begins in January. No state uses the firing squad as a primary means of execution anymore, though the practice is still permitted in Oklahoma and Utah as something of a last resort.

Yet while the firing squad may seem an unusual solution for lawmakers to seize upon — it's been used only three times since 1976 — perhaps more puzzling here is why Wyoming is even addressing the issue in the first place: The state has a single death row inmate.

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