SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is set to execute a convicted killer by firing squad June 18 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 injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles, a rarely used relic that harks back to Utah’s territorial history.
“I would like the firing squad, please,” Gardner told state court Judge Robin Reese on Friday morning, after Reese told him his avenues for appeal appear to be exhausted.
Gardner was sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of Utah attorney Michael Burdell during an escape attempt and shootout at the old Metropolitan Hall of Justice in Salt Lake City on April 2, 1985.
Defense attorney Andrew Parnes said he plans to quickly seek a stay of execution and appeal Reese’s ruling to the Utah Supreme Court. It is unclear whether a stay would be granted, but an appeal, once received, would be promptly reviewed because of the nature of the case, said Utah State Courts spokeswoman Nancy Volmer.
Of the 35 states with the death penalty on the books, 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 use it only if lethal injection was deemed unconstitutional. The state has never used the method.
Defense attorneys on Friday argued against signing the death warrant, saying a jury never heard mitigating evidence in the case that could have led it to decide against the death penalty. They also said to execute Gardner after so many years is cruel and unusual punishment.
