Utah judge allows state to execute Ronnie Lee Gardner using five-man firing squad

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."

Source: CNN.com, April 23, 2010

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

Source: The Times, April 23, 2010

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