This is a list of individuals executed in the U.S. state of Utah.
# | Name | Date of execution | Method of execution | Victim(s) | Governor |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
– | Patsowits [1] and his brother [2] | Spring 1850 | garroting | Patsowits killed an emigrant settler and his brother had made several death threats [2] | — |
– | An emigrant [3] | 1850 | Beheading | — | |
1 2 | Antelope and Long Hair [4] | September 15, 1854 | hanging | Two sons of a Mormon bishop in Cedar Valley [4] [5] | Brigham Young |
3 | Thomas H. Ferguson [6] | October 28, 1858 [7] | hanging | Alexander Carpenter [8] | Alfred Cumming |
4 | William Cockcroft [7] | September 21, 1861 | firing squad | Robert Brown | vacant |
– | "Unknown Man" [9] | 1862 | firing squad | Unknown person | |
5 | Jason R. Luce [10] | January 12, 1864 | firing squad | Samuel R. Bunton [11] | James Duane Doty |
6 | Robert Sutton [12] | October 10, 1866 | firing squad | Frederick White [8] | Charles Durkee |
7 | Chauncy W. Millard [12] | January 29, 1869 | firing squad | Harlem P. Swett [10] | vacant |
8 | John Doyle Lee | March 23, 1877 | firing squad | Mountain Meadows massacre | George W. Emery |
9 | Wallace Wilkerson [13] | May 16, 1879 | firing squad (botched) [1] | William Baxter | |
10 | Frederick Hopt (a.k.a. Fred Welcome) [14] | August 11, 1887 | firing squad | John Franklin Turner | Caleb Walton West |
11 | Enoch Davis [15] | September 14, 1894 | firing squad | Enoch's wife | |
– | An American Indian man [2] | 1896 | A white woman | ||
12 | Charles H. Thiede [16] | August 7, 1896 | hanging | Thiede's wife | Heber Manning Wells |
13 | Pat Coughlin [17] | December 15, 1896 | firing squad | Deputy Sheriff Dawes and Constable Stagg | |
14 | Peter Mortensen [18] | November 20, 1903 | firing squad | James R. Hay [19] | |
15 | Frank Rose [18] | April 22, 1904 | firing squad | Rose's wife | |
16 | J. J. Morris [9] | April 30, 1912 | hanging [5] | Morris' wife [20] | William Spry |
17 | Jules C. E. Szirmay (a.k.a. Jules Zirmay) [9] | May 22, 1912 | firing squad | A school boy | |
18 | Harry Thorne [21] | September 26, 1912 | firing squad | A grocery clerk | |
19 | Thomas Riley [9] | October 24, 1912 | firing squad | A grocery clerk | |
20 | Frank Romeo [21] | February 20, 1913 | firing squad | Albert Jenkins [22] | |
21 | Joe Hill | November 19, 1915 | firing squad | John G. Morrison and his son Arlington | |
22 | Howard DeWeese [23] | May 24, 1918 | firing squad | His wife | Simon Bamberger |
23 | John Borich [23] | January 20, 1919 | firing squad | A woman for insurance money | |
24 | Steve Maslich [9] | January 20, 1922 | firing squad | A man in Salt Lake City | Charles R. Mabey |
25 | Nick Oblizalo [9] | June 9, 1922 | firing squad | A man in Salt Lake City | |
26 | George H. Gardner [24] | August 31, 1923 | firing squad | Joseph Irvine and a police officer | |
27 | Omer R. Woods [25] | January 18, 1924 | firing squad | Woods' invalid wife | |
28 | Henry C. Hett (a.k.a. George Allen) [25] | February 20, 1925 | firing squad | Police sergeant Pierce | George Dern |
29 | Pedro Cano [26] | May 19, 1925 | firing squad | A woman in Park City | |
30 | Ralph W. Seyboldt [27] | January 15, 1926 | firing squad | Patrolman David H Crowther | |
31 | Edward McGowan [28] | February 5, 1926 | firing squad | Bob Blevins (and raped his wife and daughters) [28] [29] | |
32 | Delbert Green [30] | July 10, 1936 | firing squad | Green's foster father/uncle James Green, mother-in-law/aunt, and wife | Henry H. Blood |
33 | John W. Deering [31] | October 31, 1938 | firing squad | Oliver R. Meredith Jr. | |
34 | Donald Lawton Condit [32] | July 30, 1942 | firing squad | Harold A. Thorne | Herbert B. Maw |
35 | Robert Walter Avery [33] | February 5, 1943 | firing squad | Detective Hoyt L. Gates | |
36 | Austin Cox Jr. [34] | June 19, 1944 | firing squad | Judge Lewis V. Trueman (also killed two other men and two women) | |
37 | James Joseph Roedl [35] | July 13, 1945 | firing squad | Abigail Agnes Williams | |
38 | Eliseo J. Mares Jr. [36] | September 10, 1951 | firing squad | Jack D. Stallings | J. Bracken Lee |
39 | Ray Dempsey Gardner [35] | September 29, 1951 | firing squad | Shirley Jean Gretzinger | |
40 | Don Jesse Neal [37] | July 1, 1955 | firing squad | Sgt. Owen T. Farley | |
41 42 | Verne Alfred Braasch and Melvin Leroy Sullivan [38] | May 11, 1956 | firing squad | Howard Manzione [39] | |
43 | Barton Kay Kirkham | June 7, 1958 | hanging (last in Utah) | David Avon Frame (also killed Ruth Holmes Webster but was executed for murdering Frame) | George Dewey Clyde |
44 | James W. Rodgers [40] | March 30, 1960 | firing squad [41] | Charles Merrifield [42] | |
45 | Gary Gilmore | January 17, 1977 | firing squad | Ben Bushnell and Max David Jensen | Scott M. Matheson |
46 | Dale Selby Pierre | August 28, 1987 | lethal injection | Stanley Walker, Michelle Ansley, and Carol Naisbitt | Norman Bangerter |
47 | Arthur Bishop | June 10, 1988 | lethal injection | Alonzo Daniels, Kim Peterson, Danny Davis, Troy Ward, and Graeme Cunningham | |
48 | William Andrews | July 30, 1992 | lethal injection | Stanley Walker, Michelle Ansley, and Carol Naisbitt | |
49 | John Albert Taylor | January 27, 1996 | firing squad | Charla Nicole King | Michael Leavitt |
50 | Joseph Mitchell Parsons | October 15, 1999 | lethal injection | Richard Lynn Ernest | |
51 | Ronnie Lee Gardner | June 18, 2010 | firing squad | Michael Burdell (also killed Melvyn Otterstrom and wounded George "Nick" Kirk but was executed for murdering Burdell) | Gary Herbert |
Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading, is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Execution by shooting is a fairly old practice. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are usually readily available and a gunshot to a vital organ, such as brain or heart, usually kills relatively quickly.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the United States, currently used by 29 states, the federal government, and the military. Its existence can be traced to the beginning of the American colonies. The United States is the only developed Western nation that applies the death penalty regularly. It is one of 54 countries worldwide applying it, and was the first to develop lethal injection as a method of execution, which has since been adopted by five other countries. The Philippines has since abolished executions, and Guatemala has done so for civil offenses, leaving the United States as one of four countries to still use this method.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Utah.
A condemned prisoner's last meal is a customary ritual preceding execution. Various countries have various traditions in this regard. A "little glass of rum," but no formal last meal, was granted to the condemned in historical France in the minutes before execution; no meal was offered as the condemned learned of their impending execution only on the fatal morning, generally just minutes in advance.
John Albert Taylor was an American who was convicted of burglary and carrying a concealed weapon in the state of Florida, and sexual assault and murder in the state of Utah. Taylor's own sister tipped off police in June 1989 after 11-year-old Charla King was found raped and strangled to death in Washington Terrace, Utah. His fingerprints were found at the crime scene, which was located in an apartment complex where he had been staying. In December 1989, Taylor was sentenced to death and placed on death row at Utah State Prison.
In Mormonism, blood atonement is a controversial doctrine which teaches the view that the atonement of Jesus does not apply because some crimes are extremely heinous. Instead, to atone for these sins, the perpetrators should be killed in a way that allows their blood to be shed upon the ground as a sacrificial offering.
The Hi-Fi murders were the brutal torture and killings of three people during a robbery at the Hi-fi Shop, a home audio store in Ogden, Utah, on the evening of April 22, 1974. Several men entered the Hi-fi Shop shortly before closing time and began taking hostages; two would survive but with severe life-changing injuries. Violence included kicking a pen into an ear and the brutal rape of a teenage girl who was later shot in the head. The hostages were also forced to drink a corrosive drain cleaner, causing horrific burns to their mouths and throats. The crime became notorious for its violence and accusations of racial bias in the Utah judiciary.
When a person accused of a crime is convicted and sentenced to death, the person is sometimes permitted to make a final statement, or express their last words, before being executed. The substance of these last words may or may not have anything to do with the crime of which the condemned person has been convicted.
Oba Chandler was an American murderer who was convicted and executed for the June 1989 murders of Joan Rogers and her two daughters, whose bodies were found floating in Tampa Bay, Florida, with their hands and feet bound. Autopsies showed the victims had been thrown into the water while still alive, with ropes tied to a concrete block around their necks. The case became high-profile in 1992 when local police posted billboards bearing enlarged images of the suspect's handwriting recovered from a pamphlet in the victims' car. Chandler was identified as the killer when his neighbor recognized the handwriting. This was the first use of billboards by law enforcement in the US; billboards then became useful tools in searches for missing people.
Utah State Prison (USP) is one of two prisons managed by the Utah Department of Corrections' Division of Institutional Operations. It is located in Draper, Utah, United States, about 20 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
James Donald French was an American criminal who was the last person executed under Oklahoma's death penalty laws prior to Furman v. Georgia, which suspended capital punishment in America from 1972 until 1976. He was also the only prisoner executed in the United States that year.
James W. Rodgers was an American who was sentenced to death by the state of Utah for the murder of miner Charles Merrifield in 1957. In his final statement before his execution by firing squad in 1960, Rodgers requested a bulletproof vest. His execution by firing squad would be the last to be carried out in the United States before capital punishment was halted by the U.S. Supreme Court. The death penalty was reinstated in 1976 and the first person executed in Utah subsequent to that date was Gary Gilmore in 1977.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Saudi Arabia. The country performed at least 158 executions in 2015, at least 154 executions in 2016, and at least 146 executions in 2017.
Sugar House Prison, previously the Utah Territorial Penitentiary, was a prison in the Sugar House neighborhood of Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The 180-acre (73 ha) prison housed more than 400 inmates. It was closed in 1951 due to encroaching housing development, and all of its inmates were moved to the new Utah State Prison in Draper. The site is now occupied by Sugar House Park and Highland High School.
John W. Deering was the subject of an experiment to observe what would happen to the human heart during death by gunshot. Deering, an American facing execution by the state of Utah for the May 1938 murder of Oliver R. Meredith Jr., volunteered to have himself hooked up to an electrocardiogram while he was shot by a firing squad. The test indicated that his heart stopped in about 15 seconds of being hit, although other bodily functions, such as breathing, continued for a longer period of time.
Ronnie Lee Gardner was an American criminal who received the death penalty for shooting a man in the face and killing him during a robbery in 1985, and was executed by a firing squad by the state of Utah in 2010. Gardner's case spent nearly 25 years in the court system, prompting the Utah House of Representatives to introduce legislation to limit the number of appeals in capital cases.
Barton Kay Kirkham was a member of the United States Air Force who was discharged in 1955 after committing a robbery in Colorado while away without leave. In 1956, he was sentenced to death after the murder of two grocery store clerks during an armed robbery in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Joseph Mitchell "Yogi" Parsons was an American who was executed for the August 1987 murder of Richard Lynn Ernest. Parsons hitched a ride with Ernest in California and stabbed him to death at a remote rest area in Utah. After assuming Ernest's identity, Parsons continued to insist that he was Ernest when he was later arrested.
Wallace Wilkerson was an American stockman who was sentenced to death by the Territory of Utah for the murder of William Baxter. Wilkerson professed his innocence, but chose to die by firing squad over hanging or decapitation. The execution was botched; Wilkerson took up to 27 minutes to die because the firing squad missed his heart.