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Utah death row inmate picks firing-squad option

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Utah death row inmate picks firing-squad option Empty Utah death row inmate picks firing-squad option

Post by TexasBlue Sat Apr 24, 2010 1:50 pm

Utah death row inmate picks firing-squad option

Jennifer Dobner
Associated Press
Saturday, April 24, 2010


Salt Lake City -- Utah is set to execute a convicted killer by firing squad in June after a judge agreed Friday to the inmate's request for the method, renewing a debate over what critics see as an antiquated, Old West-style of justice.

Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, was given the choice of being killed by lethal injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles.

"I would like the firing squad, please," Gardner told state court Judge Robin Reese on Friday.

Gardner was sentenced to death for killing an attorney 25 years ago during a failed escape attempt and shootout.

Of the 35 states with the death penalty, Utah is the only one to use the firing squad as a method of execution since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Two men have died in a hail of bullets since that decision: Gary Gilmore, on Jan. 17, 1977 - after famously uttering the last words "Let's do it" - and John Albert Taylor on Jan. 26, 1996.

Oklahoma is the only other state that considers a firing squad an acceptable option, but by law would only use it if lethal injection was deemed unconstitutional. The state has never used the method.

The judge set the execution for June 18.

Utah's death row inmates were for decades allowed to choose how they wanted to die. State lawmakers removed that choice in 2004 and made lethal injection the default method, though inmates sentenced before then still have a choice.

Gardner is one of at least four of 10 men on Utah's death row who have said they want to die by firing squad.

Gardner was convicted of the fatal shooting death of Utah attorney Michael Burdell during an escape attempt and shootout at the old Metropolitan Hall of Justice in downtown Salt Lake City on April 2, 1985.

Although he was handcuffed and surrounded by prison guards, a female acquaintance slipped Gardner a loaded, long-barreled .22-caliber handgun in the basement of the building just before the shooting. He shot Burdell in the head, wounded a court bailiff and was himself shot in the right shoulder before being captured on the courthouse lawn as he tried to flee.
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