In a Sunday article titled “Idaho murders case: Bryan Kohberger’s likelihood of firing squad execution if convicted increases,” Fox News sounds an unmistakable note of excitement that the former PhD candidate credibly accused of the 2022 horrific murder of four sleeping undergrads could eventually end up being shot dead by Potato State corrections officers as the result of a bill designating firing squads as the state’s primary execution method steadily advancing though the state Senate.
“Idaho is one step closer to becoming the first state to use a firing squad as its primary execution method, months ahead of the start of college murder suspect Bryan Kohberger’s trial,” says the lede to the story which, while tying together two far less tenuously connected news cycles than some other Murdoch media products have in the past, still seems maybe just a little bit forced.
It’s not like the Republican supermajority Idaho legislature is doing this with the express intent that the 30 year-old Kohberger be shot dead so much as ensuring that he and others whom would be condemned have less room for appealing and delaying their sentences based on the increasingly complex issues surrounding lethal injection. Kohberger isn’t even mentioned at all in the Idaho Capital Sun article cited. But the high-profile murders and the prospect of a punishment as violent as the acts Kohberger committed were a no-brainer for the clickbaity propaganda network.