⚠️ “They Want a Floor Drain for the Blood”: Inside Idaho’s New Execution Room

Leaked documents show architects discussing floor drains for “bodily liquids” and gunfire acoustics like it’s just another project.

Family,

Before we dive into one of the most disturbing stories I’ve covered this year, I need to tell you something important.

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The American Firing Squad Industry

Let me walk you through something happening right here in the United States — not in some distant authoritarian regime, not in a war zone, not in a collapsed dictatorship — but in Idaho, in 2025.

Contractors, architects, designers, and construction firms — ordinary Americans — are casually discussing the engineering requirements for a firing squad execution chamber.
Not metaphorically. Literally.

I’m going to state this plainly:
You cannot understand the brutality of American state violence until you hear how casually people can talk about killing another human being.

Leaked documents show architects from Elevatus Architecture and contractors from Okland Construction discussing the layout, acoustics, and cleaning needs of a firing squad room as calmly as if they were designing a bathroom renovation.

One architect wrote:

“They would like a floor drain in the execution room. It’s OK if they have to mop/squeegee bodily liquids into the drain.”

He actually typed that sentence.
A human being wrote that in a design memo — “bodily liquids” — as if he was talking about spilled paint.

Another asked whether the sound of gunfire would be “acceptable” in adjacent rooms, suggesting it be suppressed to “the sound level of a motorcycle driving by.”
Because God forbid someone’s ears be hurt while a man is being shot to death.

These weren’t government interrogators.
These weren’t soldiers in a torture chamber.
These were American architects in button-down shirts, sitting in office chairs, discussing angles and drainage and rifle suppressors.

A firing squad chamber doesn’t get built without the private sector.
Someone has to design it.
Someone has to pour the concrete.
Someone has to calculate how blood will move across the floor.

And these companies — Elevatus and Okland — said yes.

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How Did We Get Here?

For more than a decade, states have struggled to acquire lethal injection drugs. Manufacturers worldwide — shamed by the barbarity of American executions — began refusing to supply them. Executions became botched. Men were burned alive by malfunctioning chemicals. Others suffocated for twenty minutes while nurses jabbed them endlessly, trying to find a vein.

Instead of abolishing the death penalty, some states looked for new ways to kill.

Idaho decided the answer was a firing squad — one of the most visibly traumatic and brutal methods left.

International human rights experts warn that firing squad executions violate basic standards of decency and constitute cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law. (That phrase — “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” — is a legal term used by the UN to describe actions that degrade human dignity. It’s one category below torture — and still illegal.)

Idaho didn’t care. It passed a law making firing squads the primary method of execution. Not a backup. Not a last resort. The preferred option.

And then they hired contractors to begin building the chamber where these killings will take place.

This is where the private sector steps in — because executions don’t happen without architects, engineers, and builders. And these companies don’t have to say yes. They can refuse. They can opt out. They can choose not to profit from death.

Elevatus and Okland chose to take the job.

Here’s the specific language contractors used as they discussed designing the killing room — these are direct quotes from the leaked documents:

• “They would like a floor drain in the execution room. It’s OK if they have to mop/squeegee bodily liquids into the drain.”
• “Sound of gunfire acceptable in adjacent rooms — sound level of a motorcycle driving by.”
• “Sound suppressed just enough to ensure no damage to unprotected ears.”
• “Would IDOC be open to utilizing suppressors and subsonic ammo if helps save cost to achieve acoustic goals?”

Read those lines again.

They didn’t ask:
“Is this moral?”
“Is this humane?”
“Should we be building a death chamber?”

They asked whether the sound of gunfire would disturb the office next door.

This is how oppression works: not only through violence, but through bureaucrats and professionals who treat killing like a line item in a construction plan.

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This Is American Violence, Not an Exception to It

People sometimes tell me, “America isn’t like Israel,” or “We don’t torture people here,” or “We don’t build killing machinery.”

Really?

The United States is the world leader in incarceration.
It operates torture sites domestically and abroad.
It used firing squads for decades.
It still kills disproportionately Black, poor, disabled, mentally ill prisoners.
It’s home to corporations that build prisons, handcuffs, tasers, solitary confinement units, lethal injection beds, and now — firing squad execution chambers.

Israel’s genocide is extreme, yes.
But the logic of state violence — the engineering of death, the bureaucratic planning of killing rooms — has deep roots here.

State violence is not spontaneous. It’s designed. It’s planned. It’s drafted, revised, budgeted, approved, and built.

And that’s what we’re seeing in Idaho.

Ordinary people building extraordinary cruelty. Please consider supporting this campaign fighting against it.

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We Need to Tell These Stories — Before They Become Normal

This is why independent journalism matters so much right now.
Because stories like this — stories about architects planning where the blood goes after the bullets tear through someone’s body — will never lead the evening news.

Executions in America only survive because the machinery behind them is kept quiet.

We’re going to expose it.

But I can’t do that alone.

Family, if this work matters to you — if you want a platform that not only reports on Gaza and Israel but also on the brutality here at home, on the prison industry, on the death penalty, on corporate complicity in violence — I’m asking you to help us grow.

We’re pushing hard from 3,168 to 3,200 members — one of our biggest membership pushes in years as we push to 4,000!

If you can, please click here to become a member, or click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member.

This platform is people-powered — and it survives, grows, and stays free to the world because you choose to support it.

Love and appreciate each of you.

Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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