The Utah Senate yesterday passed a bill authorizing the use of firing squads for executions as a backup in case the primary method of lethal injections is unavailable.

The bill is seen as a response to the growing movement that is successfully pressuring manufacturers of the drugs used in injections to refuse to supply them to states.

The bill's chief sponsor, Republican Paul Ray, said last November that it essentially doesn't matter how the state executes prisoners. "We have to have an option," he said then. "If we go hanging, if we go to the guillotine, or we go to the firing squad, electric chair, you're still going to have the same circus atmosphere behind it. So is it really going to matter?"

In a statement to the local press, Utah's Republican governor Gary Herbert seemed to indicate that he will sign the legislation: