Utah Executes Murderer by Firing Squad

Utah Executes Murderer by Firing Squad
By KIRK JOHNSON
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: June 18, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/us/19death.html?hp


DENVER — A five-member firing squad at the Utah State Prison took aim and fired .30-caliber bullets at a target pinned on the chest of Ronnie Lee Gardner, a convicted murderer, just after midnight on Friday. He was pronounced dead at 12:20 a.m. Mountain Time, after almost 25 years on death row and several months as the center of international attention focused not so much on crime as on his punishment.

It was the third execution by firing squad in Utah — the only state still using that form of punishment — since 1976, when the United States Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty.

“The execution warrant for Mr. Gardner has been served,” the Utah Department of Corrections said in statement.

Mr. Gardner, 49, was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to death for murdering a man in a botched courthouse escape attempt. Last-minute appeals on Thursday filed by his lawyers with the United States Supreme Court, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver and Gov. Gary R. Herbert were all rejected.

“Mr. Gardner has had a full and fair opportunity to have his case considered by numerous tribunals,” Mr. Herbert, a Republican, said in a letter refusing to stay the execution. “Upon careful review, there is nothing in the materials provided this morning that has not already been considered and decided.”

In the 1985 courthouse escape attempt and shootout — which occurred during a hearing about an earlier murder committed by Mr. Gardner at a Salt Lake City bar — he killed a lawyer, Michael Burdell, and wounded a court bailiff. The family members of those victims, testifying at a hearing this month before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, were divided on the question of punishment, with some favoring execution and some pleading that the defendant’s life be spared.

Mr. Gardner’s lawyers also argued that the jurors in the case had voted for the death penalty without hearing adequate testimony about the years of abuse he had suffered as a child.

But a member of Mr. Gardner’s legal team, Dale A. Baich, said in a telephone interview a few hours before the execution that Mr. Gardner appeared to have accepted his fate.

“He’s comfortable and he’s at peace,” Mr. Baich said.

Only Utah, of the 35 states that impose the death penalty, still has death by shooting as an option, and then only for some. In 2004, the state Legislature changed the penal code, mandating that all executions thereafter be by lethal injection. A person convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death before the legal change took effect, however, can still choose lethal injection or the firing squad.

Four other death row inmates, grandfathered in under the old law, like Mr. Gardner was, have indicated that they might choose the firing squad if and when their time comes.

The last firing squad execution in Utah was in 1996, when John Albert Taylor, convicted of raping and strangling an 11-year-old girl, was put to death. Mr. Gardner chose the firing squad as his means of execution, over lethal injection, in a hearing in April.

The only other state with a firing squad option in its penal code is Oklahoma, which would allow the shooting of condemned prisoners only if lethal injection and electrocution were found unconstitutional.

Executions are not common in Utah. Mr. Gardner was only the seventh person put to death since 1976, compared with more than 450 in Texas. But in executions per capita — measured against Utah’s much smaller population — the state ranks 19th in the nation, according to calculations last year by the Death Penalty Information Center, an anticapital punishment group. Mr. Gardner ate his last meal on Tuesday, prison officials said, having decided to fast prior to his death.

The meal included steak, lobster tail, apple pie, vanilla ice cream and 7-Up, all prepared and served at the Utah State Prison, where the execution took place, about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City. After being moved to an observation cell on Wednesday night, Mr. Gardner spent his time sleeping, reading and watching the “Lord of The Rings” trilogy, the Utah Department of Corrections said on its Web site.