The Idaho Department of Correction estimates that it will cost around $750,000 to build or retrofit a death chamber for firing squad executions.
Idaho Department of Correction Director Jeff Tewalt last year told lawmakers there would likely be as many legal challenges to planned firing squad executions as there are to lethal injections. At the time, he said he would be reluctant to ask his staffers to participate in a firing squad.
“I don’t feel, as the director of the Idaho Department of Correction, the compulsion to ask my staff to do that,” Tewalt said. Both Tewalt and his former co-worker Kevin Kempf played a key role in obtaining the drugs used in the 2012 execution of Richard Albert Leavitt, flying to Tacoma, Washington, with more than $15,000 in cash to buying them from a pharmacist. The trip was carefully kept secret by the department but revealed in court documents after University of Idaho professor Aliza Cover sued for the information under a public records act.
Kempf was promoted to lead the Idaho Department of Correction two years later but now is the executive director of the Correctional Leaders Association. He said the execution process is always challenging for all involved, including the family members of victims. Those challenges could be amplified in firing squad executions, he said.
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