Killer executed by firing squad in Utah

A convicted killer was executed by firing squad, Ronnie Lee Gardner aged 49 was shot by a team of five anonymous marksmen with a matched set of .30-caliber rifles, he is the first person to be executed by a firing squad in the United States in 14 years. He had a white target pinned to his chest and was strapped to a chair, was pronounced dead at 12:20am.
Ronnie Gardner was sentenced to death for capital murder in 1985 after a fatal courthouse shooting of attorney Michael Burdell during a failed escape attempt where he was facing a 1984 murder charge in the shooting death of a bartender.

The lethal injection was adopted by Utah as the default execution method in 2004 however Ronnie Gardner was still able to choose the firing squad option because he was sentenced before the law changed. Lawyers for Gardner said, “He did it because he preferred it – not because he wanted the controversy surrounding the execution to draw attention to his case or embarrass the state.”

Although some decried the execution as barbaric, there were no protests outside only about two dozen members of Gardner’s family who held a vigil outside the prison as he was shot. Certified police officers, who volunteered for the execution remained anonymous, they stood about 25 feet from Gardner, behind a wall cut with a gun port. They were armed with a matched set of .30-caliber Winchester rifles, one of which was loaded with a blank so that no-one knows who fired the fatal shot.

Picture courtesy of theseanster93

US News