Utah | Doctor, anti-death penalty advocates say firing squad poses moral and practical problems

As the days tick down to Ralph Menzies’ execution, anti-death penalty advocates said Friday that a firing squad leaves open the possibility for human error and potential suffering.

Menzies is scheduled to die on Sept. 5 for kidnapping and murdering Maurine Hunsaker in 1986 — he is still awaiting a ruling from the Utah Supreme Court, which is considering whether his dementia warrants a pause in execution proceedings for a new competency evaluation.

If the execution does happen, it would be the 4th firing squad the U.S. has seen in 15 years, and just the 6th since executions resumed in 1977.

Most of those have occurred in Utah, 1 of just 2 states to use the method since 1977. In fact, Utah became the 1st state to resume executions with the firing squad death of Gary Gilmore, who murdered 2 Brigham Young University students in 1976.

Utah’s last firing squad execution killed Ronnie Lee Gardner, who was already facing a murder charge in 1985 when he was handed a gun in the Salt Lake City courthouse and fatally shot Michael Burdell, an attorney.

In Utah, the firing squad is a 5-person team of POST certified peace officers — they will fire a .30 caliber weapon from 21 feet, aiming at a target that’s placed over the inmate’s heart. One randomly chosen member will shoot a rifle with blank rounds, though none of the 5 officers will know who actually has the dud.

Dr. Jonathan Groner, a retired surgeon and an expert on death penalty methods who examined autopsy pictures of Gardner, said the images raise questions regarding the efficacy of a firing squad.

“We don’t have precise anatomic landmarks, but it’s clear the 2 lower bullets are way outside where the heart would be. So that’s a little bit unusual,” he said on Friday, showing pictures of the exit wounds on Gardner’s back. “It’s hard to tell where they went through, but I was surprised by seeing these exit wounds in these locations.”

After examining pictures of the entry wounds, Groner said it’s “concerning that some of these bullets may not have gone to where the heart is.”

“In theory, the firing squad execution shouldn’t be botchable, right? The people firing the guns are trained to fire guns, they’re 15 to 20 feet away, and they practice. So why some people seem to get it done right and some don’t, is an interesting thing,” Groner said.

This past year, South Carolina carried out the firing squad executions of Brad Keith Sigmon and Mikal Deen Mahdi, making the Palmetto State the only other state to use the method. Groner researched the executions “extensively” and believes there is a troubling difference between the 2 executions.

“You can look at the bullet wounds and they are very, very different,” Groner said, particularly for Mahdi, who was sentenced to death for murdering an off-duty police officer.

“It is quite clear that he did not die quickly. I think every witness saw movement for a number of seconds,” Groner said. “So it seems possible that there is some sort of implicit bias in the execution process.”

Randy Gardner, Ronnie Lee’s brother, has become a vocal opponent of the death penalty in the years since his brother’s execution, particularly the firing squad. Gardner said he doesn’t like calling himself a victim — instead, he prefers the term “collateral damage.”

“I don’t condone what these criminals did, or what my brother did, and I don’t condone the state of Utah doing the same thing that he did,” said Gardner, calling the firing squad “vulgar and repulsive.”

“The collateral damage that’s happened in the past is way beyond the initial execution,” he said. “It’s a failed policy … There is no humane way to execute a person, I’m absolutely against all forms of execution.”

Another anti-death penalty advocate who spoke to reporters on Friday was Jennifer Herron, the oldest daughter of Maurine Hunsaker who was adopted and never actually met her mother.

Herron said while Menzies has taken a lot from her, she still opposes his execution.

“I don’t think it’s fair, and it doesn’t get us anywhere. It wasn’t that right for him to kill. Why should it be right for us to kill?” she said. “If we do execute him, we’re not allowing our society to rise above. We’re better than that.”

Source: Utah News Dispatch, Kyle Dunphey, August 23, 2025

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

— Oscar Wilde

Comments

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

Two Executions In Six Hours: Florida Set For Historical Double Execution Tuesday

Florida is preparing to execute two death row inmates on Tuesday, July 28, in an action that would mark the state’s first double execution in more than 60 years. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12 p.m., followed six hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone at 6 p.m. If carried out, these will mark the 39th and 40th executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the 11th and 12th in the state since the beginning of 2026. In response, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) has launched petition and letter-writing efforts asking DeSantis to halt both procedures. The group has organized two public vigils outside Florida State Prison in Raiford, set for 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., contingent on whether stays are issued.

Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

Florida executes 2 men in a day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term. STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog