Should a Firing Squad Be His Fate?

(TheRedAlertNews.com) – The suspect in the murders of four University of Idaho students in November – 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger – could be executed by a firing squad if found guilty, reports say.

Kohberger, a criminal justice doctoral student, has been charged with stabbing to death Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Ethan Chapin, 20, and Xana Kernodle, 20, in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022.

Even though prosecutors have made no declarations yet as to whether they would seek the death penalty for Kohberger if he is found guilty, a New York Post report says that is a possibility “considering the heinous crime.”

However, if convicted, Kohberger might face a firing squad execution because of a bill introduced to the Idaho House last week by Republican state Rep. Bruce Skaug.

Skaug’s legislation would restore firing squads as a legal execution method in Idaho, where death penalties are executed only through lethal injection.

The GOP lawmaker’s bill stipulates that the Idaho Department of Correction officials must determine whether lethal injection would be available within five days of a death warrant. If it isn’t, the execution would be done through a firing squad.

Skaug has argued firing squads are more humane since they cannot be botched – unlike lethal injection.

He initiated the bill after, in November, the state canceled a scheduled execution since no lethal injection chemicals were available.

Another US state, Utah, has restored firing squad executions for the same reason.

The firing squad was a legal execution method in Idaho from 1982 to 2009, when it was banned.

Last year, Idaho’s legislature adopted a law to give providers of lethal injection chemicals anonymity. However, those still couldn’t be procured for the execution of Gerald Pizzuto Jr. in November.

Bryan Kohberger is believed to have stalked his victims for weeks before the quadruple murder, according to officials cited in the report. He has been linked to the crime scene through a “variety of DNA evidence.”

Kohberger has been charged with four counts of homicide. He is expected to enter a plea on June 26. Then Latah County prosecutors would have to announce by the end of July whether they would pursue the death penalty for him.

Interviews with the suspect’s former friends have described him as a formerly “obese, heroin-addicted bully” who desperately wanted to be a police officer and to dominate others as an alpha male.

Even though the Pennsylvania native lost almost half of the more than 300 pounds he weight in his junior year in high school, he developed an eating disorder and, at one point, had to be hospitalized.

His former friends said, however, that they would never imagine he would one day become the suspect in a quadruple murder case.

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