At 12:25 a.m., 48-year-old Taberon Dave Honie was pronounced dead by Utah Department of Corrections officials. It had been 14 years since the state last executed a prisoner.
The sentence was carried out by a lethal injection of pentobarbital.
Honie spent his final hours in an observation cell at the Utah State Correctional Facility northwest of Salt Lake City, officials said. He met with family, told them to “keep their heads up” and ate a cheeseburger, fries and a milkshake as his last meal.
At 12:03 a.m., Honie gave his final statement. It was provided by corrections spokesman Glen Mills and the panel of media witnesses.
“From the start it’s been, if it needs to be done for them to heal, let’s do this. If they tell you you can’t change, don’t listen to them. To all my brothers and sisters in here, continue to change. I love you all. Take care.”
At 12:04 a.m. the lethal injection began.
A second dose was delivered at 12:13 a.m.
At 12:21 a.m. the EKG machine showed a flatline and a sheet was drawn over the condemned.
“Today, our department fulfilled one of the most consequential responsibilities given to the Department of Corrections,” said department director Brian Redd. “No one involved today takes joy in carrying out this responsibility, but we recognize it as one of our statutory duties, and we take it seriously.”
At a designated free speech zone approximately a mile and a half from the prison, several dozen people attended a vigil in the hours leading up to the execution.
Karla Williams is originally from Chicago but now calls Vineyard home. She attended with the hope “that our legislators just stop this.”
“I just hate it, and it just doesn't solve anything, you know?” she said just after midnight.
“Believe me when I say, I feel for the victims' families. I never want to take away from that. But I don't know. I don't know. And just as a Christian woman, God chose mercy, you know?”
Honie was sentenced to death for the 1998 sexual assault and murder of his then-girlfriend’s mother, Claudia Benn. He was 22 when he broke into her house in Cedar City, the tribal headquarters of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, after a day of heavy drinking and drug use. He repeatedly slashed Benn's throat and stabbed other parts of her body. Three of Benn’s grandchildren, including Honie’s 2-year-old daughter, were in her home.
Benn was considered a pillar of her family and the community.
Honie had said he wasn’t in his “right mind” when he killed Benn and doesn’t remember much about the murder. He spent 25 years on death row after his 1999 sentencing and had been appealing his sentence throughout his incarceration.
In 2023, he and five other Utah death-row inmates sued to overturn the state’s death penalty calling it cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit was later dismissed.
After exhausting his appeals earlier this year, the state moved forward with plans for his execution. A judge signed his execution warrant on June 10.
In July, the board of pardons rejected his final request to have his sentence commuted to life in prison. During the two-day hearing, the family of the victim called for “an eye for an eye.”
“Taberon, you robbed us,” Benn’s cousin, Betsy China, said at the time. She was also a family witness to the execution.
The last Utah inmate to be executed was Ronnie Lee Gardner. He was killed by firing squad in 2010 for a murder committed in 1985. Capital punishment is rare in Utah, but five men are currently on death row.
Anti-death penalty advocates, including Gardner’s brother, Randy, gathered at the Utah State Capitol Wednesday morning to address the media and deliver a petition and letter to urge Gov. Spencer Cox to intervene.
In a statement on Tuesday, Cox said, unlike other governors, he does not have the authority to commute death sentences.
Randy Gardner said he still suffers from post-traumatic stress from his brother’s execution.
“The collateral damage of what we call the death penalty, it's just not right,” he said. “It's not a moral thing that we should be executing our own citizens.”
Some Utah faith leaders have also spoken out against the state still having the death penalty on the books. Father Kenneth Vialpando with the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City said everyone is called to be "our brother’s and our sister's keeper by promoting justice, not vengeance, by promoting life, not death.”
In the teachings of the Catholic Church “capital punishment is an offense against the inviolability of life and the dignity of the human person,” he said. “Which contradicts God's plan for man and society, which does not render justice to the victims and their families, but rather fosters vengeance.”
Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes released a statement shortly after it was announced that Honie’s execution warrant had been carried out. He acknowledged the “deeply held beliefs, powerful emotions and divergent views regarding the death penalty.”
“Death by execution is one of the most extreme uses of government power,” he said.
“Many would argue it is ineffective, improper and beyond the authority of man to exercise. Many would disagree.”
Reyes went on to say the state “approached the exercise of its power and attendant responsibilities with the seriousness and solemnity that such an act merits” and expressed hope that Honie’s execution would deter further “heinous crimes.”
The Associated Press and KUER’s Jim Hill contributed to this report
