The Utah Board of Pardons has decided once that execution is an appropriate penalty for William Andrews' role in the Hi Fi killings and does not need to reconsider, prosecutors say.
Andrews, who has been on death row since his conviction in the 1974 torture-murders at the Hi Fi Shop in Ogden, is scheduled to be executed by injection July 30.But Andrews, one of the nation's longest-tenure death-row inmates, has asked the pardons board for an unprecedented second commutation hearing.
The board voted 2-1 in 1989 to deny clemency, but a federal appellate court issued a stay just days before his scheduled execution that August.
Special prosecutor Robert Wallace said Tuesday the pardons board and the courts already have reviewed every claim Andrews has made, including incompetent counsel and racial bias, and found them without merit.
Like co-defendant Dale Pierre Selby, who was executed in 1987, Andrews is black.
"The main thing is, the (board's) object is to decide whether the punishment fit the crime, and they already did that," said Wallace, who submitted a 26-page response to Andrews' request.
In 1989, the pardons board had three members. It now has five, although one member has stepped down.
Board administrator John Green said the four members met Tuesday to discuss when they might make a decision on Andrews' request and concluded it may take until next week.
"There's nothing definite on when a decision will be made up," Green said.
Meantime, 2nd District Judge Ronald O. Hyde apparently will not take action on defense objections to the language in Andrews' death warrant.
Andrews' attorneys said the warrant's wording had been changed, without their consent, from saying that Andrews was "sentenced to death" to "judgment of death heretofore entered be executed."
Lawyer Robert Anderson had contended the wording was an attempt to circumvent Utah's new life-without-parole statute in Andrews' case. But Hyde disagreed, saying the law only allowed him to set an execution date, not resentence Andrews.
Five people were bound and forced to drink liquid drain cleaner during the robbery in April 1974. One woman was raped and all were shot, but two men survived. Selby admitted firing the fatal shots.