History
The spring 1850 garroting of Patsowits, a Ute, was the first recorded execution in the provisional State of Deseret. [1] Utah Territory was established in September 1850, and it permitted condemned prisoners to choose between hanging and firing squad. In 1851, beheading was introduced as a third execution option. [2] No prisoner chose this method and the option was eliminated in 1888. [3] In 1955, Utah state lawmakers voted to introduce the electric chair; however, the state never used electrocution due to failure to provide appropriation. [4] Forty-four executions occurred in the State of Utah and Utah Territory before the national moratorium in 1972; [5] six were by hanging and 38 were by firing squad. [6] In 1958, twenty-one-year-old Barton Kay Kirkham became the last prisoner to be hanged by the state of Utah. [7] The last pre-moratorium execution in Utah took place on March 30, 1960.
In 1967, when the last pre-moratorium execution took place, Utah was the only remaining state to allow death row inmates to choose between firing squad and hanging. [4] [8] Utah attempted to reintroduce death penalty statutes during the moratorium but they were struck down by the 1972 United States Supreme Court decision in the case Furman v. Georgia . [9] The state formally reinstated capital punishment on January 7, 1973, [10] and the new death penalty statutes were approved by the United States Supreme Court with the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976. The reinstatement allowed Utah to move forward with the death sentences of Dale Selby Pierre and William Andrews for crimes committed in 1974 prior to the reinstatement of capital punishment. They were later executed in 1987 and 1992, respectively. On January 17, 1977, Utah became the first state to execute a prisoner after the moratorium ended: Gary Gilmore was executed by a firing squad, [11] having selected that method over hanging. Lethal injection was introduced in 1980 [8] and in February of that year, the Utah State Legislature replaced the option of hanging with the option of lethal injection. [12]
The first bill proposing to eliminate the firing squad option was introduced in the Utah House of Representatives in January 1996. [13] In 2004, the legislature passed HB180, which removed the right of the condemned to choose the method of execution and left lethal injection as the only remaining option in the state. [14] [15] The abolition of the firing squad was not retroactive; three inmates on death row at Utah State Prison who chose this method of execution before the end of February 2004 were to be executed by firing squad under a grandfather clause. [15] The execution of 49-year-old Ronnie Lee Gardner on June 18, 2010, was the state's third execution by firing squad since the capital punishment moratorium was lifted, and the country's first sanctioned shooting in 14 years. [14]
Legislation signed by Utah Governor Gary Herbert in March 2015 restores the firing squad as a legal method of execution, requiring its use if the state is unable to obtain the necessary lethal injection drugs within 30 days of a scheduled execution. [16] [17]
Utah is the only state besides Nevada and South Carolina to have ever used the firing squad. Oklahoma is the only other state currently allowing firing squads, only allowing them solely in the event that lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia and electrocution are all declared unconstitutional. As of August 2024, five inmates remain on death row following the execution of Taberon Honie and the overturning of Douglas Lovell's death sentence. [18]
