Utah | Taberon Honie comes closer to execution as Utah parole board denies commutation request

Utah’s parole board did not find “sufficient cause” to grant the death row inmate’s request to stop his execution, which is currently scheduled for Aug. 8.

Utah’s parole board will not stop the upcoming execution for Taberon Honie, putting an end to one of the death row inmate’s last chances to avoid his death by lethal injection in less than two weeks. The five-member board announced Friday it would not grant Honie clemency after holding an emotional commutation hearing earlier this week — where Honie and his family members asked them to save his life, while the victim’s family tearfully pleaded with them to end it. Ultimately, the board said in a short written decision that it did not find “sufficient cause” to grant Honie clemency.

Unlike in other states, Utah’s governor doesn’t have the power to grant a death row inmate commutation — that rests with the parole board. So with its denial, this brings Honie one step closer to his Aug. 8 execution. The 48-year-old man still has a lawsuit pending, where he is challenging the execution protocols and whether he was given enough notice to research the drug that prison officials plan to use in his execution. Arguments are expected in that case Tuesday.

When reached Friday, a spokesperson for the Utah attorney general’s office did not comment on the board’s decision. Therese Day, one of Honie’s attorneys, said their legal team was “saddened and disappointed” by the board’s decision. “The person who committed the offense 26 years ago is not the same person who will be executed in two weeks,” she said in a statement. “What has remained the same is Mr. Honie’s sincere remorse and acceptance of responsibility for the crimes he committed.”

Day said the parole board had the power to change Honie’s fate. But his execution, she said, “will only inflict more trauma that will have a ripple effect into future generations.” Earlier this week, at his commutation hearing, Honie questioned whether he deserved the parole board’s mercy after killing his ex-girlfriend’s mother, Claudia Benn, in 1998. But ultimately, he asked the parole board: “Would you allow me to exist?”

Honie said he wanted to keep living to be a support to his daughter, who is now 27 and has a child of her own. He also told them that he has changed from the 22-year-old man who attacked and killed Benn. Had he not been extremely intoxicated that night in 1998, he said, he doesn’t believe he would have killed her.

Honie’s attorneys also presented evidence to the parole board about the death row inmate’s traumatic childhood growing up on a Hopi reservation — which they said contributed to his alcohol and drug misuse at an early age. These experiences, along with a number of head injuries he received as a child, had a “synergistic effect” with his “extreme intoxication” on the night when he killed Benn, they argued.

That July day, Honie called his ex-girlfriend and demanded she visit him, threatening to kill her family if she refused. Later that evening, Honie took a cab to Benn’s home. He broke the door in with a rock and then beat and bit Benn, slashed her throat, stabbed her genitals multiple times and prepared to have anal sex with her before realizing she had died. Three children were in the home during the attack, including his daughter and a child that he also sexually assaulted that evening.

Lawyers with the Utah attorney general’s office had argued that the parole board should not second-guess the judge’s 1999 decision to hand down a death sentence, and that Honie did not deserve their mercy because of the brutal nature of his crimes. Four of Benn’s family members recounted their memories with her during the commutation hearing, recalling that she was a strong Paiute woman who was helping her tribe in her work as a substance abuse counselor. They asked the parole board to let the execution move forward. “Personally, I think that we should just close the book,” said Betsy China, Benn’s cousin. “My choice would be the death penalty. Just get this over.”

Source: sltrib.com, Jessica Miller, July 26, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________

Twitter/X | Facebook | Telegram | Contact Us

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Former Florida officer who raped, murdered 11-year-old set to be executed

An execution date has been set for a former Mascotte police officer who, in May 1987, assaulted and murdered an 11-year-old girl. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for James Aren Duckett on Friday. He’s scheduled to be executed on March 31. It’ll be the state’s 5th execution this year, following a record 19 executions in 2025. Duckett was convicted in the murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee about a year after her death. According to officials, Duckett took the 11-year-old to a lake, where he sexually battered, strangled and drowned her.

‘Come on with it’: Arkansas inmate asks to hasten execution

A Faulkner County judge has scheduled an August hearing to determine whether a death row inmate can bypass his attorney’s advice, drop his remaining appeals, and hasten his execution. Scotty Ray Gardner, 65, is facing the death penalty for the 2016 killing of his girlfriend, Susan Heather Stubbs, in Conway. In letters sent to Circuit Judge Chuck Clawson and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Gardner said he wants to end his legal battles, writing that he is tired of prison life and skeptical he will receive a fair hearing. “It’s simple,” Gardner wrote in a September letter. “Come on with it.”

Florida executes Melvin Trotter

The execution of Melvin Trotter for the murder of 70-year-old Virgie Langford in 1986 comes as Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor questions Florida's 'deeply troubling' lethal injection record. Florida has executed its second inmate of the year even as a Supreme Court justice questioned the state's “deeply troubling" record on lethal injections and how it "shrouds its executions in secrecy." Melvin Trotter, 65, was executed by lethal injection on Tuesday, Feb. 24, for the 1986 murder of 70-year-old Virgie Langford, a mother of 4 who was on the verge of retirement when she was stabbed to death in the corner grocery store that she owned for five decades. Trotter was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. ET.

Man convicted in 1986 murder set to become Florida's second execution of 2026

STARKE, Fla. (DPN) — A man convicted of stabbing and strangling a grocery store owner during a robbery nearly 40 years ago is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening, becoming the second person executed in Florida this year. Melvin Trotter, 65, is set to receive a three-drug lethal injection beginning at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. Trotter was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1986 killing of Virgie Langford, 70, who owned Langford’s Grocery Store in Palmetto, in southwest Florida's Manatee County.

India | POCSO Court awards death penalty to UP couple for sexual exploitation of 33 children

A special court in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda on Friday sentenced a former Junior Engineer (JE) of the Irrigation Department and his wife to death for the sexual exploitation of 33 minor boys — some as young as three — over a decade, officials said. The POCSO court termed the crimes as “rarest of rare” and held Ram Bhawan and his wife Durgawati guilty of systematically abusing children between 2010 and 2020 and producing child sexual abuse material. Convicting the duo under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the court sentenced them to death for offences including aggravated penetrative sexual assault, using a child for pornographic purposes, storage of pornographic material involving children, and abetment and criminal conspiracy, they said.

North Carolina | DA won't seek death penalty against woman accused of poisoning family

HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (DPN) — Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against a Western North Carolina entrepreneur accused of poisoning her family during a Thanksgiving dinner and killing a man nearly two decades ago. During a mandatory Rule 24 hearing Thursday in Henderson County Superior Court, Assistant District Attorney John Douglas Mundy announced that the state will proceed with the case against Gudrun Linda Jean Casper-Leinenkugel, 52, as a non-capital matter. The decision removes the possibility of an execution, meaning the maximum penalty Casper-Leinenkugel now faces is life in prison without parole.

Twenty Years Since the Last Scheduled Execution in California and a Focus on the Participation of Physicians in Executions

February 21, 2006, a California court’s decision effectively halted the planned execution of Michael Angelo Morales, marking the start of California’s 20-year moratorium on execution scheduling and throwing into the spotlight the tension between physician participation in executions and their pledge to show “ the utmost respect for life .” " The events surrounding Morales’s impending fate brought to the surface the long-running schism between law and medicine, raising the question of whether any beneficial connection between the professions ever existed in the execution context. History shows it seldom did. Decades of botched executions prove it. " — Professor Deborah Denno, The Lethal Injection Quandary: How Medicine Has Dismantled the Death Penalty

Oklahoma Ends Indefinite Death Row Solitary Confinement

Every year, thousands of prisoners in the U.S. are placed in solitary confinement, where they endure isolation, abuse, and mental suffering . This practice might soon become rarer for some inmates in Oklahoma, thanks to the efforts of activists in the state. Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Oklahoma announced that the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester had ended the practice of indefinite solitary confinement for "the vast majority" of death row prisoners.

Chinese courts conclude trials of 2 criminal gangs from northern Myanmar, 16 sentenced to death

Chinese courts have concluded the trials of 2 major criminal groups based in northern Myanmar involved in telecom and online fraud, the Supreme People's Court (SPC) said Thursday. At a press conference held by the SPC, it was revealed that by the end of 2025, courts across the country had concluded first-instance trials of over 27,000 cases related to telecom fraud operations in northern Myanmar, with more than 41,000 returned suspects sentenced. Notably, among the trials of the so-called "4 major families" criminal gangs -- which had drawn widespread domestic and international attention -- those of the Ming and Bai groups have completed all judicial proceedings.

Florida | Governor DeSantis signs death warrant in 2008 murder case

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a death warrant for Michael L. King, setting an execution date of March 17, 2026, at 6 p.m. King was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2008 kidnapping, sexual battery and murder of Denise Amber Lee, a 21-year-old North Port mother. On January 17, 2008, Michael Lee King abducted 21-year-old Denise Amber Lee from her North Port home by forcing her into his green Chevrolet Camaro. He drove her around while she was bound, including to his cousin's house to borrow tools like a shovel. King took her to his home, where he sexually battered her, then placed her in the backseat of his car. Later that evening, he drove to a remote area, shot her in the face, and buried her nude body in a shallow grave. Her remains were discovered two days later. During the crime, multiple 9-1-1 calls were made, but communication breakdowns between emergency dispatch centers delayed the response. The case drew national attention and prompted w...

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog