Utah Death Row Inmate Executed by Firing Squad

The State of Utah executed Ronnie Lee Gardner, a convicted killer, last night shortly after midnight local time.  Gardner’s execution received substantial national attention because it was carried out by a firing squad. It was the first time in at least 14 years that an American inmate was executed by a firing squad.

After the U.S. Supreme Court, 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Utah’s governor all denied last-minute request for reprieve, Gardner was strapped into a chair, had a target pinned over his heart and was fired on by five anonymous marksmen armed with .30-caliber rifles and firing from behind a ported wall.

Gardner was only the third man killed by firing squad in the U.S. since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling reinstated capital punishment in 1976.  (Utah was actually the site of the first execution after the 1976 reinstatement when Gary Gilmore died by firing squad in 1977.) Utah amended its death penalty law in 2004 making lethal injection the default method of execution. However, nine inmates remained on death row in Utah, convicted prior to the 2004 amendment. Those nine inmates, a number which included Gardner, could still legally choose execution by firing squad instead of lethal injection.

Gardner’s attorney said the decision was based on preference, and not by a desire to embarrass the state or draw publicity to his case.

The Supreme Court turned down three appeals late Thursday, although one of its orders showed that two justices, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens, would have granted Gardner’s request for a stay.

Gardner was sentenced to death for the 1985 murder of attorney Michael Burdell during an escape attempt at a courthouse. Gardner was in court at the time, facing a 1984 murder charge in the shooting death of bartender Melvyn Otterstrom. He was 24 at the time of Burdell’s death.

Gardner claimed to be a changed man after spending more than half of his life on death row. He wanted to help at-risk youth. Unfortunately for Gardner, it was the first half of his life that ultimately determined his way of life and death.

His capital defense and appellate attorneys report that he first came to the attention of authorities at age 2 when he was found walking alone on a street wearing only a diaper. At age 6, Gardner was addicted to sniffing gasoline and glue. By 10, he was doing LSD and heroin and serving as lookout while his stepfather committed robberies.

Harder drugs – LSD and heroin – followed by age 10. By then, Gardner was tagging along with his stepfather as a lookout on robberies, according to court documents. He ended up in a state mental facility for a year and a half and then went to foster care where he was sexually abused. Gardner killed Otterstrom at age 23 and, six months later, shot Burdell in the face inside a courtroom.

Despite the shocking nature of this information about his childhood, the jury did not find that these facts about Gardner’s upbringing (presented as mitigating factors) did not outweigh the aggravating factors of the murder.

The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the firing squad execution as an example of what it called the United States’ “barbaric, arbitrary and bankrupting practice of capital punishment.”

In 2000, Florida changed its execution method from the electric chair to lethal injection. There is no firing squad option availablein Florida. Former Governor Jeb Bush imposed a yearlong moratorium on executions in Florida due to complications which arose in a 2006 execution. Procedures were changed and executions resumed.