Execution in Utah

Ronnie Lee Gardner was sentenced to death in 1985, for shooting a lawyer in a courthouse. He will be executed by firing squad.

For many years I believed capital punishment to be a deterrent but my mind changed after the case of the British West Midlands Police fitting up suspects. It further changed with the growth in the number of weirdos who do not see execution as a deterrent but as an attraction.

But the USA has capital punishment and that is their business.

And it isn't really the method of execution I object to. If I were to be executed I wouldn't care how they did it as long as it was quick. All executions affect the people designated to carry them out and this is not healthy, but I suppose unavoidable. I don't know if a firing squad involves more people than a lethal injection.

No, what I wanted to highlight was the fact that he was convicted 25 years ago. That's a quarter of a century on death row. In England when we had capital punishment if you were not hanged within 101 dys of sentence you were reprieved. 25 years awaiting death must surely be what the American Constitution calls 'a cruel and unusual punishment'.