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Bryan Kohberger, accused of killing four University of Idaho students, could be executed via firing squad if found guilty under new proposals drawn up in response to a shortage of lethal injections.

Mirror reports that the twenty-eight-year-old man is currently being held without bail over the deaths of Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. He was arrested in December of last year.

Kohberger is a criminology PhD candidate and has been alleged to have broken into the students' shared house in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13. Reports say that he stabbed each of them multiple times until they died. Kohberger was eventually found and arrested at his family home, just a 10-minute drive from the location where the murder took place.

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Kohberger - whose trial is still months away - may now face the possibility of death by firing squad if he is found guilty, thanks to a new bill being heard by lawmakers this week.

This gruesome murder comes alongside recent news that a murdered model's severed head was found in a soup pot in Hong Kong, and a mum of two was killed in front of her 2-year-old and newborn after she got into a heated argument with a stranger over a parking spot.

Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is a state-sanctioned practice of deliberate execution of criminals whose crimes have been deemed the most serious offences. In the UK, the Human Rights Act formally abolished the death penalty. However, in the U.S., House Bill 186 was introduced to the Idaho State Legislature by Representative Bruce Skaug last Wednesday.

As many states in the U.S. struggle to acquire the dangerous chemicals necessary to perform the lethal injection, the new bill gives the director of the Idaho Department of Correction prerogative to determine whether execution by lethal injection is available no later than five days after a death warrant is issued. If not, execution by firing squad can be used instead.