Sans the lethal drugs, Utah says fire away
SALT LAKE CITY – Utah became the only state to allow firing squads for executions when Gov. Gary Herbert signed a law Monday approving the method for use when no lethal injection drugs are available, even though he has called it “a little bit gruesome.”
The Republican governor has said Utah is a capital punishment state and needs a backup execution method in case a shortage of the drugs persists.
The governor’s office, in a statement announcing the new law, noted that other states allow execution methods other than lethal injection. In Washington state, inmates can request hanging. In New Hampshire, hangings are fallback if lethal injections can’t be given. And an Oklahoma law would allow the state to use firing squads if lethal injections and electrocutions are ever declared unconstitutional.
Utah’s new approval of firing squads carries no such legal caveat and represents the latest example of frustration over botched executions and the difficulty of obtaining lethal injection drugs as manufacturers opposed to capital punishment have made them off-limits to prisons.
Afghans, U.S. make a show of good faith
CAMP DAVID, Maryland – In a show of unity, Afghan and United States officials laid the groundwork for new relations between the two countries Monday, including plans to seek American funding to maintain an Afghan security force of 352,000 and long-term counterterrorism efforts. Discussions over future U.S. troop levels continue as the war winds down.
In an all-day session at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin mountains, dozens of U.S. and Afghan officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and chief executive Abdullah Abdullah gathered to relaunch a relationship strained by nearly 14 years of war and often-testy relations with former Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Police: No evidence of gang-rape at Virginia
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – A five-month police investigation into an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia that Rolling Stone magazine described in graphic detail produced no evidence of the attack and was stymied by the accuser’s unwillingness to cooperate, authorities said Monday.
The article, titled “A rape on campus,” focused on a student identified only as “Jackie” who said she was raped at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity more than two years earlier.
It described a hidden culture of sexual violence fueled by binge drinking at the college. Police said they found no evidence of that, either.
There were numerous discrepancies between the article, published in November 2014, and what investigators found, said Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy Longo.
Associated Press
