A look back at local, national and world events through Deseret News archives.
On Jan. 17, 1977, convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, 36, was killed by a firing squad at Utah State Prison in the first U.S. execution in a decade.
A last-minute court decision cleared the way for the man’s execution. His last words: “Let’s do it.”
Per the Deseret News that day, “Gilmore, who killed two young men in two robberies in Utah County in July 1976, became the first man to suffer the death penalty in the United States in nearly 10 years. His execution was fought literally down to the last minute by opponents of capital punishment. Gilmore’s victims were Max Jensen, Orem, a 24-year-old law student, and Bennie J. Bushnell, 26, a Provo motel manager.
“Gilmore was in the news often for the year and a half he spent in Utah’s prison. His love affair with Nicole Barrett and their feeble attempts at double suicide, his love poems and his defiant challenge to state authorities to get his execution over with almost overshadowed the depth of his crimes. His government-sanctioned death triggered a spate of executions across the country.”
Since then, 1,607 people have been executed in the U.S., including eight in Utah. Taberon Honie’s execution came late last year. Utah changed its laws in 2004 to eliminate the firing squad option. The majority of those executed in recent years is by lethal injection, according to the Death Penalty Execution Center. In 2005, Utah modified the law so that the firing squad could be an option if the drugs needed for a lethal injection aren’t available.
Norman Mailer’s book “The Executioner’s Song” (1979) won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It became a made-for-television biographical crime drama film, which was shot in Utah.
Here are some stories from Deseret News archives, some dated, that focus on the Gilmore case and death penalty issues in general:
“Utah has interesting history of executions”
“Execution No. 1,000 — since Gilmore”
“GILMORE’S AIM WAS TO ATONE, UNCLE RECALLS”
“Opinion: A conservative argument for ending the death penalty”
“30 years after Gilmore, a plea to end death penalty”
“Protests 30 years after Gilmore”
“Utah lags 17 states in executions”
"Few news crews seek to witness Parsons’ death”
"Chris Hicks: Utah-made ‘Executioner’s Song’ has its DVD debut”
