Back in April, we blogged about Ronnie Gardner, a death row inmate in Utah.
As we wrote, Gardner (pictured) isn’t just any old death-row inmate. Gardner has asked to be executed by firing squad. Utah is only one of two remaining states that allow executions by firing squad (Oklahoma also allows them, albeit under limited circumstances).
The AP on Tuesday updated the situation, which hasn’t changed all that much since late April, when a state judge signed Gardner’s execution warrant. Barring a last-minute reprieve, Gardner will be strapped into a chair, hooded, brandished with a small white target, and shot to death on June 18.
Like most other states, Utah lawmakers made lethal injection the default method of execution in 2004, but inmates condemned before then can still choose the firing squad.
That’s what Gardner did in April, politely telling a judge, “I would like the firing squad, please.” Neither he nor his attorneys have said why.
What to make of this? Critics of the method aren’t too happy. “The firing squad is archaic, it’s violent, and it simply expands on the violence that we already experience from guns as a society,” Bishop John C. Wester, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, said during an April protest. The diocese is part of a new coalition pushing for alternatives to capital punishment in Utah.
The AP has a detailed, though rather grisly, writeup of how the execution is likely to unfold. We won’t go through all the details here, but the ritual likely to be followed is bizarre and interesting. First, “after Gardner is allowed the customary last meal and visitors,” reports the AP, “prison guards will strip search [Gardner] and give him a dark-colored prison jumpsuit to wear to the 20-by-24-foot execution chamber.”
Continues the AP:Once the witnesses are in place, the prison warden will open the curtains on the observation room windows. Gardner will be asked for any last words.
The guns are handed out randomly to the officers. One will be loaded with a blank, so no one will know who fired the fatal shot. By law, the identities of those selected for the firing squad remain secret.
Then, after a final check for a stay with the Utah attorney general’s office, comes the order to the executioners, who fire from a distance of about 25 feet.
The gunmen stand behind a wall cut with a gunport, their rifles bench-rested to assure accuracy, DeLand said.
LBers, let’s ask this: What do you think of this type of execution as compared to others, like lethal injection?
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/06/08/utah-gearing-up-for-its-first-firing-squad-execution-since-96/