Under Trump, there were 13 executions in his last six months as president. Biden must clear death row now to stop that and what Albert Camus described as the most cold-blooded premeditated murder. On Jan. 14, 2021, I stood in a small chamber in the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, while the federal government carried out an execution. Relegated to a spot 6 feet away from the gurney, I prayed with Corey Johnson, the “Gentle Giant” as he was known on death row. He was one of the last of 13 people executed under then-President Donald Trump, who carried out an unprecedented killing spree during the final six months of his presidency.
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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
Under Trump, there were 13 executions in his last six months as president. Biden must clear death row now to stop that and what Albert Camus described as the most cold-blooded premeditated murder. On Jan. 14, 2021, I stood in a small chamber in the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, while the federal government carried out an execution. Relegated to a spot 6 feet away from the gurney, I prayed with Corey Johnson, the “Gentle Giant” as he was known on death row. He was one of the last of 13 people executed under then-President Donald Trump, who carried out an unprecedented killing spree during the final six months of his presidency.
Mississippi has 35 men and one woman awaiting execution on death row. The state Supreme Court handed down two decisions Thursday that dealt blows to two men on Mississippi's death row. Richard Jordan, who has been on death row in Mississippi since 1977 for the 1976 kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter, the wife of a Gulfport bank executive, learned the court denied a motion for rehearing in his pursuit of post-conviction relief.
With Trump returning to the White House, only mass commutations will stop another federal execution spree. Five days after Orlando Hall was executed in the federal death chamber, Donald Trump appeared in the White House Rose Garden for the 2020 Thanksgiving turkey pardon ceremony. The enormous white birds, Corn and Cob, stood ridiculously as Trump wished them a “very long, happy, and memorable life.” At the Special Confinement Unit inside the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, men on death row watched news coverage on TV.
Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were brutally executed in ‘Indonesia’s Alcatraz’. But they remained defiant until the end. The five remaining members of the infamous “Bali Nine” drug smuggling gang in Indonesia may now be coming home after the Indonesian government appeared to agree for them to be repatriated back to their native Australia this week. The news came following a meeting between Indonesia’s Coordinating Minister for Law, Human Rights, Immigration and Correctional Institutions, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, and Australia’s Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke, during which the Indonesian authorities reportedly provisionally green-lit the proposal – which Mr Burke said was “a significant step forward and shows significant goodwill”.
According to reports, five prisoners, including a woman, were executed in prisons across Zanjan, Tabriz, and Isfahan. Execution in Isfahan On the morning of Saturday, December 7, 2024, a prisoner identified as Ashkan Fathi, aged 21, was executed in Isfahan Central Prison. Fathi had been arrested two years ago on charges of murder and subsequently sentenced to death.
President Joe Biden is facing growing calls to use his clemency power to commute the sentences of the 40 men on federal death row before he leaves office. The U.S. Constitution grants the president the power to issue pardons—forgiving federal criminal offenses—and commutations, which reduce penalties. The president recently exercised that power to extend a broad pardon to his son, Hunter, despite previously pledging not to do so. The move spares his son a possible prison sentence after he was convicted and pleaded guilty in tax and gun cases.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and is pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. It’s the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history. The commutations announced Thursday are for people who have served out home confinement sentences for at least one year after they were released. Prisons were uniquely bad for spreading the virus and some inmates were released in part to stop the spread. At one point, 1 in 5 prisoners had COVID-19, according to a tally kept by The Associated Press.
Ali Khaleqi Farghani, a 22-year-old prisoner convicted of premeditated murder, was executed on his birthday in Mashhad Central Prison on Thursday, December 5, 2024. According to a report received by the Hengaw Organization, he had been arrested two years ago on charges of premeditated murder and was subsequently sentenced to two counts of the death penalty.
A Filipina drug convict on death row in Indonesia told AFP from prison Friday that her planned transfer was a "miracle", in her first interview since Manila and Jakarta signed an agreement last week to repatriate her. Mother of two Mary Jane Veloso, 39, was arrested and sentenced to death in 2010 after the suitcase she was carrying was found to be lined with 2.6 kilograms (5.7 pounds) of heroin, in a case that sparked uproar in the Philippines. Both she and her supporters claim she was duped by an international drug syndicate, and in 2015, she narrowly escaped execution after her suspected recruiter was arrested.
The state of Indiana is scheduled to carry out its first execution in 15 years on December 18, 2024, with the scheduled execution of Joseph Corcoran. Sentenced to death for the 1997 murders of four people, including his brother, Mr. Corcoran has a long history of serious mental illness. He has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, which includes symptoms of hallucinations and delusions, and multiple experts have testified that he is incompetent to face execution. Mr. Corcoran holds the consistent belief that prison guards are torturing him with an ultrasound machine.
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