US inmate chooses to die by firing squad

A CONDEMNED US inmate’s decision to die today in a barrage of bullets fired by five unnamed marksmen was vilified by many as an archaic form of Wild West-style justice.

But some experts argue it is more humane than all other execution methods, without the court challenges of cruelty that plagued lethal injection.

“Lethal injection, which has the veneer of medical acceptability, has far greater risks of cruelty to a condemned person,” said Fordham University Law School professor Deborah Denno, who has written extensively on the constitutional questions that surround execution methods.

The reasons that Ronnie Lee Gardner chose death by firing squad in the state of Utah are unrelated to the drama or controversy it evokes, his attorney said.

“It’s not about the publicity. He just prefers it,” Andrew Parnes said.

This week Parnes appealed to both the 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver and the US Supreme Court, hoping to block the execution that is to take place today.

He has already ate what may be his last meal – steak, lobster tail, apple pie, vanilla ice cream and 7UP.

Utah State Prison officials said Gardner intended to fast until the execution set for this morning.

No rulings were issued by either court.

A change in state law means that only those sentenced to death before 2004 have the right to choose how it happens. It could be, therefore, that Gardner’s execution will be the last by firing squad. But it is a moment that death penalty opponents will seize upon.

Gardner, 49, was sentenced to death for a 1985 capital murder conviction stemming from the fatal courthouse shooting of attorney Michael Burdell during an escape attempt.

Gardner was at the court because he faced a murder charge in the shooting death of bartender Melvyn Otterstrom.

Barring any last minute stays, Gardner will be the first person to die by firing squad in the United States in 14 years.

The last time Utah granted clemency to a condemned man was in 1962.

He will be the third man killed by that same method in Utah since a US Supreme Court ruling reinstated capital punishment in 1976: Gary Gilmore on January 17, 1977 – after famously uttering the last words, “Let’s do it” – and John Albert Taylor on January 26, 1996.

Of the 49 executions held in Utah since the 1850s, 40 were by firing squad.

The method has also been widely used around the globe and was long the primary method of execution employed by the military, including in the US.

The identities of the five marksmen in the firing squad will be kept secret. They will each receive a rifle, one of which will be loaded with a wax bullet.

No one will know whose rifle fires the fatal shot – a precaution designed to protect all of them from subsequent remorse.