Free Republic

Sometime after midnight Friday, Ronnie Lee Gardner is to be strapped into a chair in the execution chamber at the state prison in Draper, Utah. A black hood is to be slipped over the bald head of the 49-year-old convicted killer, if he wishes. A small circular target will be pinned over his heart. It has been 14 years since rifles were last fired in a state execution. Barring a last-minute reprieve, Gardner will be only the third person to die before a firing squad in Utah  or anywhere else in the nation  since the death penalty was...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Barring a last-minute reprieve, Ronnie Lee Gardner will be strapped into a chair, a hood will be placed over his head and a small white target will be pinned over his heart. The order will come: "Ready, aim..." The 49-year-old convicted killer will be executed by a team of five anonymous marksmen firing with a matched set of .30-caliber rifles

Barring a last-minute reprieve, Ronnie Lee Gardner will be strapped into a chair, a hood will be placed over his head and a small white target will be pinned over his heart. The order will come: "Ready, aim..." The 49-year-old convicted killer will be executed by a team of five anonymous marksmen firing with a matched set of .30-caliber rifles. He is to be the third person executed by firing squad in Utah — or anywhere else in the U.S. — since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Utah was a long holdout in keeping the method, which it...

SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah is set to execute a convicted killer by firing squad after a judge agreed Friday to the inmate's request for the method, renewing a debate over what critics see as an antiquated, Old West-style of justice. Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, was given the choice of being killed by lethal injection or shot by a five-man team of executioners firing from a set of matched rifles, a rarely used relic that harkens back to Utah's territorial history. "I would like the firing squad, please," Gardner told State court Judge Robin Reese Friday morning, after Reese told...