A double murderer yesterday became the first US prisoner in 14 years to be executed by firing squad, shot through the heart by a five-member team of sharpshooters.
Shackled to a chair and with a black hood covering his head, Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, was gunned down at approximately 12:15am in a brightly lit execution chamber at Utah State Prison.
Asked if he had any last words, Gardner replied: “I do not. No.”
Utah Department of Corrections director Thomas Patterson told reporters Gardner was pronounced dead two minutes after being shot.
“This is an unusual task, but one we have done professionally,” Patterson said. “It has been done with absolute dignity and reverence for human life ... It’s been a balancing act of being sensitive to the families who lost loved ones and the family who lost a loved one tonight.”
Journalists who witnessed the execution reported seeing Gardner’s arm twitch up and down after the firing squad had blasted their 30/30 caliber Winchester rifles at a small target placed over his heart.
“It was so sudden, so quick. Boom, boom, just like that. We didn’t get a countdown. It happened so quickly,” KTVX TV’s Marcos Ortiz said.
Gardner’s gruesome death was billed as a bloody throwback to the days of old west justice, the first execution of its kind in the US for more than a decade and possibly the last ever.
But there was an unmistakably 21st century twist to his final minutes of life when Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff used the microblogging site Twitter to announce he had given the final approval for the execution.
“I just gave the go-ahead to Corrections Department to proceed with Gardner’s execution,” Shurtleff tweeted shortly before Gardner was shot. “May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims.”
Firing squads were outlawed by Utah in 2004, but the ban was not retroactive, allowing Gardner the freedom to opt for the gruesome method instead of lethal injection during a hearing in April.
Gardner spent 25 years on death row for gunning down an attorney in a failed bid to escape from a courtroom in 1985 during a murder trial. His case renewed debate about use of the death penalty in the US and divided the families and friends of his victims.
Loved ones of lawyer Michael Burdell, shot dead by Gardner in his botched escape attempt, have said they were against his execution because Burdell opposed the death penalty.
“Michael was a gentle soul. He loved people and he loved life. He would not have wanted Ronnie Lee to be killed, especially in his name,” Donna Nu, Burdell’s fiancee, said on Thursday.
“I think that we as a human race — all the brilliant minds we have on this planet — we could come up maybe with something better,” she said
Gardner’s death came after a day which saw his lawyers fail with multiple appeals to have the execution stayed, lobbying Utah Governor Gary Herbert, a federal court in Denver and the US Supreme Court. All three bids were rejected.
“Upon careful review, there is nothing in the materials provided this morning that has not already been considered and decided by the Board of Pardons and Parole or numerous courts,” Herbert wrote.
“Mr Gardner has had a full and fair opportunity to have his case considered by numerous tribunals,” he said.
The Utah Department of Corrections said Gardner was “relaxed” on Thursday, spending the day reading a David Baldacci novel — Divine Justice — while watching The Lord of the Rings fantasy trilogy.
He was served his final meal — steak, lobster, apple pie, vanilla ice cream and 7-Up — on Tuesday before choosing to commence a 48-hour fast before his execution for undisclosed reasons.
He met his attorney during the morning after saying goodbye to his brother and daughter on Wednesday through prison bars.
Gardner requested none of his family members be present at his execution, which was witnessed by a small group of state officials, relatives of Gardner’s victims and journalists from local media outlets.
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