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(Salt Lake City-AP) -- The Utah Sentencing Commission says if the Legislature gets rid of the firing squad, the law should be retroactive.
Commission members want to make lethal injection the only execution method.
That would mean four death row inmates who have opted to die by firing squad wouldn't be allowed to die that way.
Commission members want to get rid of the method because of the 'media circus' that surrounds firing squad executions.
But say eliminating the firing squad would mean death row inmates could have endless appeals if their choice of execution is gone.
A Utah firing squad employs five riflemen, one of whom fires a blank.
Utah has carried out 50 executions, 40 of them by firing squad.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
