SALT LAKE CITY, June 9 (UPI) -- A former executioner in Utah, which is preparing to execute a convicted murderer by firing squad, calls the method "100 percent justice."
Ronnie Lee Gardner, convicted of the 1985 murder of attorney Michael Burdell while attempting to escape a Salt Lake City courthouse, will face a firing squad June 18, CNN reported Wednesday. Garner is scheduled to go before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole Thursday in an attempt to have his death sentence commuted.
Amid debate on the efficacy of the death penalty itself and the method used in Utah, one former member of the state's firing squad, who wishes to remain anonymous, says the public view of this method of execution is fraught with misconceptions.
It is, he says, instantaneous and carried out with the utmost professionalism.
"It was anti-climactic," he says. "Another day at the office.
"There's just some people," he says, "we need to kick off the planet," referring to his participation in the firing squad execution of John Albert Taylor in 1989. Taylor was sentenced to death for raping and killing an 11-year-old girl, CNN said.
"The death penalty," the officer says, "is nothing more than sending a defective product back to the manufacturer. Let him fix it."
