The state of Utah recently passed a bill into law that would allow the state to use a firing squad as a death penalty. This method would only be used if lethal injections were not an option at the time of an inmate’s scheduled death. This comes in the wake of a shortage of lethal injection drugs — which, according to NPR, the state currently has none of — and multiple botched injections.

Utah was the last state to use the firing squad as a death penalty and that case in 2010 was the most recent inmate put to death by the state, according to the NPR article. Firing squads were no longer legal in the state after 2004 until this year. Inmates can only select this as a method if they were sentenced to the death penalty before the year in which the law expired.

Unfortunately, with the implementation of the law, society seems to be taking a step backward into the past instead of progressing. No matter the form of the death penalty, it is a barbaric practice with no place in our society today. This new yet old form of the death penalty should serve as a wake-up call for our country to this outdated punishment for our country’s worst criminals.

No matter the theory about what method of the death penalty is the most humane or the argument for or against the firing squad, is the death penalty itself the most logical form of punishment we have? Many prisoners who are on death row are there because they have taken the life of another. Is punishing killing with killing morally correct or the best option for retribution our country has?

In 2014 alone, three lethal injections in the United States were botched, according to the Death Penalty Information Center’s website. The three inmates each gasped for air or breathed heavily for at least 25 minutes. If mistakes in executions can be this frequent, should our states or country subject these people to the possibility of this kind of suffering?

Along with the moral question surrounding the death penalty and other forms of penalties is the question of whether there are proper alternatives for punishment. Life in prison without parole is perhaps the best sentence for our country’s worst criminals. This punishment would force the criminals to spend their lives serving time for the horrible crimes they committed.

With the elimination of the death penalty as a punishment, the question of prison overpopulation in our prison system is raised. However, at the current rate, the number of inmates put to death is minuscule compared to the total prison population. During the last five years, an average of just more than 41 criminals have been put to death in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center’s website. Also, the number of those executed in the United States has fallen or stayed the same every year since 2009.

Putting aside the moral argument, the death penalty is a greater financial burden than seeking a punishment like life without parole for criminals. The cost comes in the court cases leading up to the death sentence. According to a report by the Kansas Judicial Council and reported by Forbes, defense in a case seeking the death penalty costs four times the amount as those that do not. Also according to the Forbes article, the Washington Bar Association found that death penalty cases cost an average of $470,000 more than a similar case without the punishment as a possibility.

Taking into account the financial implications, the moral questions and the issues surrounding methods of executions, should our states be finding more barbaric ways to implement the death penalty? If all of these questions remain, can our country morally sentence our inmates to death?