Just days after an Arkansas Senate committee moved to abandon the death penalty, a Republican lawmaker has called for a return of firing squads as an execution method.
Acting between the Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval of a bill to abolish the death penalty and the General Assembly’s end-of-February deadline for new legislation, Rep. Rebecca Petty (R-Rogers) on Thursday drafted HB 1473, a shell bill — a preliminary piece of legislation to be fleshed out later — that would make firing squads a legal execution protocol in Arkansas.
“We have to hold the people that brutally execute our police and rape and murder our women and children accountable,” Petty said Friday in an email to The Huffington Post. “The people of Arkansas and the legislature overwhelming believe this.”
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Burnett said that while support for the abolition of the death penalty has grown in recent decades, a majority of Arkansans — including his fellow assemblymen — still support it.
“I’m not real encouraged by what I’m seeing,” Burnett said. “We’re next door to Texas. I think that’s about all I need to say.”
