One minute after midnight exactly one year ago, a firing squad carried out the sentence given to John Albert Taylor for raping and killing 11-year-old Charla King.
Charla's mother still doesn't know whether it was a just punishment.Sherron King has spent a year sifting through her contradictory emotions in the wake of Charla's murder and Taylor's execution. This past year was like every other year since she found her daughter dead in their Ogden apartment the day before her 12th birthday.
"What's an end for me?" she asked. "My daughter's still dead."
King isn't sure of much these days, but she does know she found no comfort and no closure in Taylor's death.
"I honestly don't know how I believe," King said of the death penalty. "I put it in God's hand and let him take care of the situation. I don't know how else to deal with it. I don't know what's right or wrong."
Since the murder, her life had been plagued by cycles of despair, hate, sadness and guilt.
She found some solace in the months before the execution by forgiving the man convicted of, but who never admitted, killing her daughter.
"God says he will forgive whom he will, but we must forgive everybody," she said. "You have take back your life. Until you learn to forgive . . . your life is going to be miserable. Where hate is, love can't grow . . . For me God was the answer."
Immediately after Taylor was shot to death by a firing squad, King said she actually felt sadness.
"I just felt like it was another death, there was so much death in this," King said. She also struggled with feelings of guilt.
"At one point, I felt like my hate caused his death," she said. "But I realized I didn't have anything to do with it."
More than anything, King feels sorry for Taylor because he had to die alone.
"He had a sad, abusive life," she said. "I feel bad that he didn't (admit to the killing), but not for my benefit. It would have helped him."
Despite her ambivalence about the death penalty, she retains very strong feelings about the criminal justice system.
"There is no such a thing as a justice system," she said. "My question is why didn't the judicial system do something about (Taylor) until it was too late? Why does it have to go this far? I haven't found a solution, but there has to be one. A justice system should look for and find a way to cure the ills of society."
She also said the death penalty is not a deterrent and shouldn't be touted as such.
"When I stop and think about the death penalty, I don't think it's set up right," she said. "I don't think it's a deterrent. . . . All you're doing is killing one person who's killed."
Knowing Taylor can never kill again is a relief, she said, but that is diminished by the realization that plenty of other violent people are still alive and free.
"People talk about freedom, but is freedom being able to walk out the door and be afraid of being killed? Is there freedom to live, or are we just free to be afraid all the time?"
She said she wasn't just robbed of her daughter, she was robbed of a sense of security and any chance for a normal life.
"I feel lost sometimes," she said. "I miss Charla so bad. . . . Everything I've ever been afraid of happened to me. . . . So I've had to learn to deal with it. I've learned to live with that nightmare."
She's glad she got the chance to remind the world that a beautiful, loving girl was taken too early. She said it's important to remember that bad things can happen to anyone, anywhere.
For now, she's moved on as best she can.
"I try not to think of (the execution or murder) too much," she said. "When it comes to my daughter, I remember that day because it was the day before her birthday. It will probably be embedded in my mind forever."