LONDON - Four bullets in the heart. After spending 25 years on death row Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, decided to be shot, collapsing under the blows of a firing squad in prison Salt Lake City (Utah). One way that seems of another era and that the offender had chosen April 23: Thursday confirmed his last will, after the governor of Utah has rejected the last request for clemency presented by his lawyers. "Gardner's case was reviewed by several courts in the full and fair 'was the explanation of Governor Gary Herbert. A few days before another application was rejected by the Board of Pardons and Parole (committee that reviews requests for grace) of Utah. The execution took place at midnight (the Italian 8), twenty minutes after the sentence was pronounced dead. The announcement went on Twitter, by the Minister Justice Mark Shurtleff has sent three post from his cell phone: "A solemn day. Unless the Supreme Court and court with my final so, Utah will use the maximum power and will execute a murderess ',' I have already given the order to the prison director to proceed. May God grant him mercy he denied to his victims' in the third message Shurtleff announced a press conference.
RITUAL - Utah abolished executions by firing squad in 2004 but who had been sentenced on that date retained the right to choose how to leave this world, whether in the squad or lethal injection. The shooting, now rare, follows a precise ritual. The condemned person is tied to a chair. Five volunteers, representatives from the police, tidy up to eight feet away, armed with Winchester rifles loaded with a 30 gauge shell, only one has the gun loaded with blanks. A goal in the white fabric is pinned at the heart of the prisoner, a container is placed at his feet to collect the blood. After having uttered the last words, his head is covered with a hood and Executioner firing, not knowing who among them will cause her death. In the case of Gardner have been all four. The witnesses can not see the face of snipers.
last meal - "He wanted anyone to see and shot him. I wanted to be there for him, I wanted very well, "said the elder brother of Ronnie Lee after the announcement of death. The prison guards have reported that the condemned waited for the execution time without showing any emotion. He remained calm, read a book and watched a movie, "The Lord of the Rings". His last meal was: steak, lobster, apple pie, vanilla ice cream and a Seven-Up.
two murders - Ronnie Lee Gardner was sentenced to death for double murder in 1985. A few months earlier he had killed during an altercation, the bartender Melvyn Otterstrom. Then, in the process, trying to escape from court shot dead one of the judges, Michael Burdell. The family of these, against the death penalty, had supported the application for clemency submitted by the lawyers (and rejected by the Supreme Court), but the family opposed the bartender. For 14 years, a sentence was not executed by firing squad in the U.S., and since 1976, when it is back in force on the death penalty, it had been carried out two more in Utah. The last, 14 years ago, was that of John Albert Taylor. With that of Gardner, are 1,216 executions in the United States, 1976 to date: 1042 by lethal injection, 157 with the electric chair, 11 by gas chamber, three by hanging, firing squad 3.
From Corriere della Sera.
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