Utah firing squad ready to go as appeals appear to fail

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah prepared to execute a condemned killer by firing squad early Friday, reviving a style of justice that hasn't been used for at least 14 years and that many criticize as archaic.

Barring a last-minute reprieve, Ronnie Lee Gardner was to be strapped into a chair, have a target pinned over his heart and die in a hail of bullets from five anonymous marksmen armed with .30-caliber rifles and firing from behind a ported wall.

Last-minute appeals and requests for stays were rejected Thursday by the U.S. Supreme Court, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Utah Gov. Gary Herbert.

The Supreme Court turned down three appeals late Thursday, although one of its orders showed that two justices, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens, would have granted Gardner's request for a stay.

"We are disappointed with the court's decisions, declining to hear Mr. Gardner's case," said one of his attorneys, Megan Moriarty. "It's unfair that he will be executed without a full and fair review of his case."

Utah Department of Corrections spokesman Steve Gehrke said there were no pending issues left for the courts. The governor had the authority to call off the execution by granting a temporary stay, but he said Gardner has had "a full and fair opportunity" to have his case considered.

After a visit with his family, Gardner was moved from his regular cell in a maximum-security wing of the Utah State Prison to an observation cell Wednesday night, Department of Corrections officials said.

On Thursday, they said Gardner was spending time sleeping, reading the novel "Divine Justice," watching the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy and meeting with his attorneys. A corrections-department spokesman said officers described his mood as relaxed.

Gardner would be the third man killed by firing squad in the U.S. since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Although Utah altered its death-penalty law in 2004 to make lethal injection the default method, nine inmates convicted before that date, including Gardner, could choose the firing squad.

Gardner's attorney said the decision was based on his preference, not a desire to embarrass the state or draw publicity to his case.

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 1984 murder charge in the shooting death of bartender Melvyn Otterstrom.

Gardner made a final effort to convince the world he was a changed man, speaking emotionally in court of his desire to start a 160-acre organic farm and program for at-risk youngsters. He acknowledged his own tortured trajectory to a parole board last week, saying: "It would have been a miracle if I didn't end up here."

Gardner first came to the attention of authorities at age 2 as he was found walking alone on a street and clad only in a diaper. At 6, he became addicted to sniffing gasoline and glue. Harder drugs — LSD and heroin — followed by age 10. By then, Gardner was tagging along with his stepfather as a lookout on robberies, according to court documents.

After spending 18 months in a state mental hospital and being sexually abused in a foster home, he killed Otterstrom at age 23. About six months later, at 24, he shot Burdell in the face as the attorney hid behind a door in the courthouse.

"I had a very explosive temper," Gardner said last week. "Even my mom said it was like I had two personalities."

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday decried Gardner's imminent execution as an example of what it called the United States' "barbaric, arbitrary and bankrupting practice of capital punishment."

At an interfaith vigil in Salt Lake City late Thursday, religious leaders called for an end to the death penalty.

"Murdering the murderer doesn't create justice or settle any score," said the Rev. Tom Goldsmith of the First Unitarian Church.

Some doubt that Gardner is, or could ever be, reformed.

Tami Stewart's father, George "Nick" Kirk, was a bailiff who was shot and wounded in Gardner's botched escape. Kirk suffered chronic health problems until his death in 1995 and became frustrated by the lack of justice that Gardner's years of appeals afforded him, Stewart said.

She said she's not happy about the idea of Gardner's death but believes it will bring her family some closure.

"I think at that moment, he will feel that fear that his victims felt," Stewart said.