The bill, introduced in the Florida Senate, expands the ways death row inmates can enforce it.
Introduced by Senator Jonathan Martin of R-Fort Myers, Sen. 1604, aims to protect Florida's status as a death penalty state if certain methods of execution, such as electric shock or legal injection, are unconstitutional by the Supreme Court or Florida Supreme Court, or if lethal injections are not available in the future.
There is currently a shortage of pentobarbital, a drug used in lethal injections, and several states are scrambling to find alternative ways to implement it.
Los Angeles District Attorney Wants to Recover the Death Penalty
Florida lawmakers want to expand the state's death penalty method. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)
If it occurs in Florida, the bill would command that “all persons sentenced to death for capital crimes shall be enforced in a manner that is not considered unconstitutional.”
Martin said Tampa Bay Times His laws ensure that the state fulfills the law and complies with enforcement.
On Tuesday, the bill passed the Florida Senator's Criminal Justice Committee.
On Wednesday, Rep. Berny Jaques of R-Largo introduced the companion bill in the Florida House of Representatives.
“We have introduced House Bill 903 because we believe that the government's main role is to protect public safety, and the death penalty plays a key role in that,” Jaques told Fox News Digital. “The bill will allow Florida to support the Constitutional death penalty without delay by giving the Department of Corrections the flexibility to use legitimate methods if current options are no longer available.”
Idaho will become the first state to prefer death by firing squads for execution
A chair is sitting in the execution chamber of the Utah State Prison on June 18, 2010 after Ronnie Lee Gardner was fired and executed by a squad in Doper, Utah. (Trent Nelson/Salt Lake Tribune via AP, Pools, Files)
The bill does not specify which alternative implementation methods can be used, but it already allows the use of some form of lethal gas as a backup for lethal injections, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. These four states (Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma) have been specifically designated nitrogen gas as the deadly chemical used in such executions.
The other four states allow death by firing squads as an alternative to fatal injections, and South Carolina allows it as an alternative to electric shock, the default way to carry out.
The move to revive Idaho's firing squad “makes sense” is the “fastest, most reliable” death penalty option, experts say
In March, South Carolina death row inmate Brad Sigmon was executed by a shooting squad. He was the first person in the United States to be executed that way for over 15 years.
Brad Sigmon was convicted in 2001 for beating the parents of an estranged girlfriend in Greenville County. (Correctal Department via the AP of South Carolina)
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Lethal injections are the most popular method of execution, accounting for 1,431 of all runs since 1976, with electrocution being the second and 163.
