Utah is scheduled to execute Taberon Honie by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 8, 2024.
Honie was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of Claudia Benn, his ex-girlfriend’s mother. He broke into her Cedar City home and brutally slashed and stabbed her. Her grandchildren, including Honie’s 2-year-old daughter, were in the house at the time.
It will mark the state’s eighth execution since 1977 after a federal moratorium was lifted on the death penalty. In fact, Utah was the first state to act with the execution of Gary Gilmore on Jan. 17 of that year.
The state’s last execution was in 2010. Ronnie Lee Gardner was killed by a firing squad for the 1985 murder of attorney Michael Burdell during an escape attempt.
KUER’s Doug Fabrizio witnessed Gardner’s death and he thinks it’s “important for journalists to be present.”
“It's our job to hold the state to account for what it's doing. All of the decisions, the sort of political decisions … the sort of critical arguments that were being made — that plays out, we report on all of that,” he explained. “But once the decision has been made, it's our job as journalists to bear witness. I also felt just symbolically, somebody should be there to say, ‘This is what's happened.’”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pamela McCall: With Gardner’s execution, you mentioned how deceiving the sense of time was. What do you recall today?
Doug Fabrizio: I do remember the sense of time being something that was really hard to really get a grip on, because everything was about time that night. The corrections spokesman was coming to us every hour to say, “this is happening now. Ronnie Lee Gardner is doing this. He's having a soda. He's talking to a [Latter-day Saint] Bishop.” But then once the actual ceremony of the execution starts to play out — It was 12:15 when the curtain was drawn. By the time Ronnie Lee Gardner was pronounced dead — it was two minutes. 12:17 is when he was pronounced dead. It seemed, honestly, really surreal.
PM: What was it like to watch a man die — knowing that this was coming?
DF: I still feel conflicted about it. I think it's important for journalists to be present at these events. I remember the journalist Ted Koppel, when he witnessed an execution in 1995, he said, “if we are going to live with capital punishment, we need to see it and know what it is about.”
But then you're questioning like, is this just me being some kind of voyeur? What am I really trying to accomplish? So, the whole time I felt conflicted about it. I witnessed him shot four times in the chest. There were five men who had volunteered to be in the firing squad. One was a blank. There were four live rounds. I'm still wondering how I was personally affected by that experience.
PM: Gardner was killed by firing squad, Honie will be killed by lethal injection. Do you see a distinction?
DF: Well, I think that we have as a society, been putting people to death for a very long time, and it wasn't that long ago when you know there were public hangings, when there were beheadings. And over the years, I think you can objectively say that we have sanitized the process. Ronnie Lee, it was a violent death. The execution that's going to take place on Thursday is also a death.
PM: What has changed about the capital punishment conversation since 2010?
DF: One thing that I was really interested in when I was thinking about covering the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner … is who would care. And I was struck by the fact that even though there was a vigil that night, there weren't very many people there. The question to me is whether or not, now, 14 years on, it will still be like that. Will there be more outrage, or will there be more protest? Because we do know, in fact, that the public is changing its mind.
It wasn't so long ago, 20 years ago or so, something like three-quarters of the population was absolutely for capital punishment. In 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed, 64%. Fast forward to the last numbers, 2023, 53% say they support capital punishment. There's the moral question, of course, is it humane? And then the other question, of course, that's coming up is whether or not we can absolutely guarantee that this person that we are putting to death is guilty. And with capital punishment, you can't go back.
[Editor’s note: While Taberon Honie has admitted his guilt, he sought, and was denied any reprieve of his death sentence.]
PM: When it comes to Taberon Honie’s execution, how do you think you're going to feel?
DF: What I hope is that my reaction won't be any different from the reaction of others. I hope that wherever you are in your opinion about capital punishment, that you take note of it. The state has ended the life of someone.
