The following is a list of people executed by the U.S. state of Utah .
No. | Name | Race | Age | Sex | Date of execution | County | Method | Victim(s) | Governor |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Gary Mark Gilmore | White | 36 | M | January 17, 1977 | Utah | Firing squad | Bennie Bushnell [lower-alpha 1] | Scott M. Matheson |
2 | Dale Selby Pierre | Black | 34 | M | August 28, 1987 | Weber [lower-alpha 2] | Lethal injection | Stanley Orren Walker, Michelle Ansley, and Carol Elaine Naisbitt | Norman Bangerter |
3 | Arthur Gary Bishop | White | 35 | M | June 10, 1988 | Salt Lake | 5 murder victims [lower-alpha 3] | ||
4 | William D. Andrews | Black | 37 | M | July 30, 1992 | Weber [lower-alpha 4] | Stanley Orren Walker, Michelle Ansley, and Carol Elaine Naisbitt | ||
5 | John Albert Taylor | White | 36 | M | January 26, 1996 | Firing squad | Charla Nicole King | Mike Leavitt | |
6 | Joseph Mitchell Parsons | White | 35 | M | October 15, 1999 | Iron | Lethal injection | Richard Lynn Ernest | |
7 | Ronnie Lee Gardner | White | 49 | M | June 18, 2010 [lower-alpha 5] | Salt Lake | Firing squad | Michael Burdell [lower-alpha 6] | Gary Herbert |
8 | Taberon Dave Honie | Native American | 48 | M | August 8, 2024 [lower-alpha 7] | Iron | Lethal injection | Claudia Marie Benn | Spencer Cox |
Race | ||
---|---|---|
White | 5 | 63% |
Black | 2 | 25% |
Native American | 1 | 13% |
Age | ||
30–39 | 6 | 75% |
40–49 | 2 | 25% |
Sex | ||
Male | 8 | 100% |
Date of execution | ||
1976–1979 | 1 | 13% |
1980–1989 | 2 | 25% |
1990–1999 | 3 | 38% |
2000–2009 | 0 | 0% |
2010–2019 | 1 | 13% |
2020–2029 | 1 | 13% |
Method | ||
Lethal injection | 5 | 63% |
Firing squad | 3 | 38% |
Governor (Party) | ||
Cal Rampton (D) | 0 | 0% |
Scott M. Matheson (D) | 1 | 13% |
Norman Bangerter (R) | 3 | 38% |
Mike Leavitt (R) | 2 | 25% |
Olene Walker (R) | 0 | 0% |
Jon Huntsman Jr. (R) | 0 | 0% |
Gary Herbert (R) | 1 | 13% |
Spencer Cox (R) | 1 | 13% |
Total | 8 | 100% |
# | 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] | Alexander Carpenter [8] | Alfred Cumming | |
4 | William Cockcroft [7] | September 21, 1861 | Firing squad | Robert Brown | vacant |
– | "Unknown Man" [9] | 1862 | Unknown person | ||
5 | Jason R. Luce [10] | January 12, 1864 | Samuel R. Bunton [11] | James Duane Doty | |
6 | Robert Sutton [12] | October 10, 1866 | Frederick White [8] | Charles Durkee | |
7 | Chauncy W. Millard [12] | January 29, 1869 | Harlem P. Swett [10] | vacant | |
8 | John Doyle Lee | March 23, 1877 | 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 | 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 | James R. Hay [19] | ||
15 | Frank Rose [18] | April 22, 1904 | 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 | Thomas Karrick, a school boy | |
18 | Harry Thorne [21] | September 26, 1912 | A grocery clerk | ||
19 | Thomas Riley [9] | October 24, 1912 | A grocery clerk | ||
20 | Frank Romeo [21] | February 20, 1913 | Albert Jenkins [22] | ||
21 | Joe Hill | November 19, 1915 | John G. Morrison and his son Arlington | ||
22 | Howard DeWeese [23] | May 24, 1918 | His wife | Simon Bamberger | |
23 | John Borich [23] | January 20, 1919 | A woman for insurance money | ||
24 | Steve Maslich [9] | January 20, 1922 | Marco Laus | Charles R. Mabey | |
25 | Nick Oblizalo [9] | June 9, 1922 | |||
26 | George H. Gardner [24] | August 31, 1923 | Joseph Irvine and a police officer | ||
27 | Omer R. Woods [25] | January 18, 1924 | Woods' invalid wife | ||
28 | Henry C. Hett (a.k.a. George Allen) [25] | February 20, 1925 | Police sergeant Nephi Pierce | George Dern | |
29 | Pedro Cano [26] | May 19, 1925 | A woman in Park City | ||
30 | Ralph W. Seyboldt [27] | January 15, 1926 | Patrolman David H Crowther | ||
31 | Edward McGowan [28] | February 5, 1926 | Bob Blevins (and raped his wife and daughters) [28] [29] | ||
32 | Delbert Green [30] | July 10, 1936 | Green's foster father/uncle James Green, mother-in-law/aunt, and wife | Henry H. Blood | |
33 | John W. Deering [31] | October 31, 1938 | Oliver R. Meredith Jr. | ||
34 | Donald Lawton Condit [32] | July 30, 1942 | Harold A. Thorne | Herbert B. Maw | |
35 | Robert Walter Avery [33] | February 5, 1943 | Detective Hoyt L. Gates | ||
36 | Austin Cox Jr. [34] | June 19, 1944 | Judge Lewis V. Trueman (also killed two other men and two women) | ||
37 | James Joseph Roedl [35] | July 13, 1945 | Abigail Agnes Williams | ||
38 | Eliseo J. Mares Jr. [36] | September 10, 1951 | Jack D. Stallings | J. Bracken Lee | |
39 | Ray Dempsey Gardner [35] | September 29, 1951 | Shirley Jean Gretzinger | ||
40 | Don Jesse Neal [37] | July 1, 1955 | Sgt. Owen T. Farley | ||
41 42 | Verne Alfred Braasch and Melvin Leroy Sullivan [38] | May 11, 1956 | Howard Manzione [39] | ||
43 | Barton Kay Kirkham | June 7, 1958 | Hanging (last in Utah) | David Avon Frame [lower-alpha 8] | George Dewey Clyde |
44 | James W. Rodgers [40] | March 30, 1960 | Firing squad [41] | Charles Merrifield [42] | |
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. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are usually readily available and a gunshot to a vital organ, such as the brain or heart, most often will kill relatively quickly.
Gary Mark Gilmore was an American criminal who gained international attention for demanding the implementation of his death sentence for two murders he had admitted to committing in Utah. After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia, he became the first person in almost ten years to be executed in the United States. These new statutes avoided the problems under the 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia, which had resulted in earlier death penalty statutes being deemed "cruel and unusual" punishment, and therefore unconstitutional. Gilmore was executed by a firing squad in 1977. His life and execution were the subject of the 1979 nonfiction novel The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer, and 1982 TV film of the novel starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Utah.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Oklahoma.
A condemned prisoner's last meal is a customary ritual preceding execution. In many countries, the prisoner may, within reason, select what the last meal will be.
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.
Blood atonement was a practice in the history of Mormonism still adhered to by some fundamentalist splinter groups, under which the atonement of Jesus does not redeem an eternal sin. To atone for an eternal sin, the sinner should be killed in a way that allows his blood to be shed upon the ground as a sacrificial offering, so he does not become a son of perdition. The largest Mormon denomination, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has denied the validity of the doctrine since 1889 with early church leaders referring to it as a "fiction" and later church leaders referring to it as a "theoretical principle" that had never been implemented in the LDS Church.
The Hi-Fi murders were the torture of five people resulting in three deaths during a robbery at the Hi-fi Shop, a home audio store in Ogden, Utah, United States, on the evening of April 22, 1974. Several men entered the Hi-fi Shop shortly before closing time and began taking hostages. They forced their victims to drink corrosive drain cleaner, which the perpetrators believed would fatally poison their hostages, but instead caused burns to their mouths and throats. Further violence included kicking a pen into an ear and the brutal rape of an eighteen-year-old woman, before three of the victims were fatally shot. The two surviving victims were left with life-changing injuries.
Utah State Prison (USP) was one of two prisons managed by the Utah Department of Corrections' Division of Institutional Operations. It was located in Draper, Utah, United States, about 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Salt Lake City. It was replaced by the Utah State Correctional Facility in July 2022.
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.
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 a convicted murderer who 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 killing a man during an attempted escape from a courthouse in 1985, and was executed by a firing squad by the state of Utah in 2010. His 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 absent without leave (AWOL). 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.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the United Arab Emirates.
Ernest Lee Johnson was an American criminal convicted and executed for the murder of three convenience store employees in Boone County, Missouri in 1994. Johnson's execution by lethal injection proved controversial, as a 2008 surgery had removed up to 20 percent of his brain tissue, leaving Johnson permanently cognitively disabled.
Ray Dempsey Gardner was an American serial killer who killed three people in three states in the 1940s. Gardner, who had a lengthy criminal record, was convicted of a murder he committed in Utah, sentenced to death, and executed in 1951.