In the early 1970s I was a North Carolinian, white boy from the South attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and working in East Harlem as part of a program. In my senior year, I visited men at the Bronx House of Detention. I had never been in a prison or jail, but people in East Harlem were dealing with these places and the police all the time. This experience truly turned my life around.
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Utah judge allows state to execute Ronnie Lee Gardner using five-man firing squad
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A Utah judge signed a death warrant Friday allowing the state to execute Ronnie Lee Gardner (left) using a five-man firing squad, a spokeswoman for the Utah's state court system told CNN.
Before signing the death warrant, Third District Judge Robin Reese asked Gardner if he wanted to be executed by the method he had chosen previously, spokeswoman Nancy Volmer said.
"I would like the firing squad, please," Gardner replied.
It would be the state's first use of the firing squad since 1996, when John Albert Taylor was executed for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. Taylor said he chose the method to embarrass Utah, which at the time was the only state that offered the firing squad as an option.
Gardner's execution date was set for June 18, 2010. However, Gardner's lawyer said he planned to file an appeal, which could change the date, Volmer said. Gardner was convicted of murder in the 1985 killing of an attorney during a courthouse escape attempt.
A change in Utah's law took the firing squad away as an execution option. But inmates, like Gardner, who have already chosen the firing squad can still be executed that way, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Oklahoma offers the firing squad as an option - but only if lethal injection and electrocution are later found to be unconstitutional, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The country's most famous execution by firing squad was when Gary Gilmore was killed using a firing squad in 1977. Asked for any last words before guns were fired, Gilmore replied: "Let's do it!"
His execution was also the inspiration for Norman Mailer's book "The Executioner's Song."
Utah death row inmate Ronnie Lee Gardner elects to die by firing squad
A murderer who has spent 25 years on death row for shooting a man while trying to escape a squad of prison guards was yesterday granted his final wish: the right to death by firing squad.
Ronnie Lee Gardner is the latest embodiment of Utah’s fondness for frontier justice and a public relations nightmare for the state. He will be executed on June 18 by marksmen armed with .30 rifles, aiming at a paper target pinned over his heart.
Utah is the only state in the US to offer death row inmates the choice of a firing squad rather than lethal injection. It is an option that at least 4 prisoners have indicated that they will take, guaranteeing the state plenty of negative publicity if it proceeds with their executions.
A judge has signed the death warrant, setting in motion a process that will lead to Gardner's execution in a specially built chair, with a hood to shield him from the sight of the gun barrels and a sloping metal pan to catch his blood. Gardner was sentenced to death in 1985 after being slipped a handgun by a woman accomplice and shooting a lawyer in the head while making a break for freedom.
Gardner was already on trial for robbing and murdering a man in a Salt Lake City bar. He came within days of being executed after giving up his right to appeal in the late 1980s but changed his mind and has been fighting his death sentence since.
The last time that a firing squad was used in Utah was in 1996 at the request of John Albert Taylor, who was convicted of the rape and strangulation of a girl, 11. Taylor had insisted on a firing squad because he did not want to "flop around like a dying fish" under a lethal injection. After quoting a line of poetry — "Remember me, but let me go" — he was shot in front of witnesses including a journalist who called it "an honest way to die."
The only other firing squad execution in Utah since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the US in 1976 was that of Gary Gilmore in 1977.
Capital punishment
— For most of the 20th century the electric chair was the US’s main method of execution. After malfunctions there was a shift towards lethal injection.
— There have been 1,201 executions since 1976 in the US
— Hanging is still allowed in New Hampshire and Washington State. It was last used in the US in 1996 when Delaware hanged Bill Bailey
The following document is a written record of convicted killer Hamida Djandoubi's last moments before he was guillotined in a Marseilles prison on September 10, 1977. This written record -- dated September 9 -- was written by a judge appointed to witness the execution. Djandoubi's execution was the last execution carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. Then-President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who had voiced his "loathing for the death penalty" before he was elected to office, flatly turned down Djandoubi's appeal for clemency and chose to let "Justice run its course", as he did on two previous instances ( Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977). Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was executed in Marseilles' Baumettes prison in September 1977. The following text was writ
The Alabama Supreme Court has authorized the execution of a second inmate by nitrogen gas, months after the state became the first state to put a person to death with the previously untested method. Justices granted Attorney General Steve Marshall’s request for an execution date for Alan Eugene Miller, who survived a 2022 lethal injection attempt.
On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence.
SALT LAKE CITY — The state of Utah requested on Tuesday that a man who’s been on death row for almost 25 years be executed. Taberon Honie was convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s mother in 1999. In the death warrant application, the state’s lawyers said Honie used up his appeals and there is no longer any legal reason to stop Honie’s execution.
In the early 1970s I was a North Carolinian, white boy from the South attending Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and working in East Harlem as part of a program. In my senior year, I visited men at the Bronx House of Detention. I had never been in a prison or jail, but people in East Harlem were dealing with these places and the police all the time. This experience truly turned my life around.
A jury of 12 Johnson County residents voted Thursday to send 31-year-old Jerry Elders to death row for the murder of Robin Waddell, agreeing with prosecutors who requested the death penalty. The defense argued for life in prison without parole, saying Thursday morning that Elders’ actions came after a lifetime of drug addiction and going in and out of jails and prisons, being kicked out of his family home as a teenager and not receiving support from family members.
Deranged nurse escapes the death penalty as she admits to killing three patients - and has been connected to 14 more - by injecting them with lethal amounts on insulin A Pennsylvania nurse who administered lethal or potentially lethal doses of insulin to numerous patients avoided the death penalty after she pleaded guilty to three counts of murder.
Based on the registered statistics at the Center for Statistics and Documentation of Iran Human Rights Monitor (Iran HRM), and through extensive research conducted in this field, the final figures of executions in April 2024 have been obtained. It should be emphasized that the actual numbers are significantly higher, as most executions in Iran are carried out secretly.
Iraqi courts have handed down hundreds of death and life sentences in recent years for people convicted of membership in a terrorist group. BAGHDAD – Eleven people were executed on Monday at Al-Hut prison in the southern Iraqi city of Nassiriya after they were convicted and sentenced to death of terrorism crimes, two security sources said.
Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); May 2, 2024: Ali Ashraf Khani, a man sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder, was executed Kermanshah Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was executed in Kermanshah Central Prison on 1st May. His identity has been established as 45-year-old Ali Ashraf Khani who was sentenced to qisas for murder.