Magnolia Tribune brings you a Bill of the Day from the Mississippi Legislature that just may pique your interest.
The Mississippi Legislature has gaveled in for the 2023 Legislative session and we bring you the very first Magnolia Tribune Bill of the Day.
Today’s bill of the day is House Bill 103, authored by State Representative Zakiya Summers (D).
The legislation would officially remove the option of a firing squad as a form of execution for those who have received the death penalty in the state of Mississippi. The state currently allows for death by lethal injection, electrocution, firing squad, or nitrogen hypoxia. The selected method is currently up to the discretion of the Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC).
“This is my second year dropping this bill. I am not a proponent of the government being able to kill anyone,” said Rep. Summers. “When you think about it in the context of Roe v. Wade, we have now forced women to give life, but at the same time the state has the right to take life.”
Summers said she does not support the death penalty at all, but if it is in statute, she does not believe that the firing squad option should be an allowable method.
The use of a firing squad was re-added to the state’s list of execution methods in 2017 by an act of the Legislature through HB 638. The action came at a time when lethal injection could have been ruled unconstitutional and other alternatives were offered in the event such a ruling occurred.
While firing squad remains an alternative for the death penalty, it is the last on the list of choices, after electrocution. Lethal injection is the preferred method chosen by the state.
Since joining the Union, Mississippi has utilized several avenues for capital punishment when upholding a sentencing of the death penalty. The first form was death by hanging which continued until October 1940 when the electric chair was introduced, according to the MDOC.
In 1954, the gas chamber was introduced, which took the place of the commonly used electric chair. It was retired in 1989 after the execution of Leo Edwards. In the time period between the two events, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, only to overturn that ruling in 1976 and uphold its constitutionality.
A partial amendment to the 1984 Mississippi code section on execution allowed that individuals who were convicted of capital punishment crimes would be put to death by lethal injection.
The legislation proposed by Rep. Summers this session would amend the code section again, this time completely removing firing squad from the available options of execution. The code section pertaining to execution is Section 99-19-51 of the Mississippi Code of 1972.
There are currently 35 individuals on death row in Mississippi – 34 males and one female – with the longest serving inmate spending 45 years on death row having been convicted in March 1977.
Sarah Ulmer
