Inmate Set for Firing Squad Eats Last Meal
Utah Department of Corrections officials say a condemned inmate set for execution by firing squad on Friday has already eaten his last meal.
The department says in a Wednesday news release that Ronnie Lee Gardner dined on steak, lobster tail, apple pie, vanilla ice cream and 7UP.
Prison officials say Gardner ate the meal prepared by the prison kitchen Tuesday night and now intends to fast until the execution.
Attorneys for Gardner have filed appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court hoping to block the execution.
The 49-year-old Gardner was sentenced to death in 1985 for the fatal shooting of an attorney during an attempted escape from the old Salt Lake City courthouse that same year.
AP The department says in a Wednesday news release that Ronnie Lee Gardner dined on steak, lobster tail, apple pie, vanilla ice cream and 7UP.
Prison officials say Gardner ate the meal prepared by the prison kitchen Tuesday night and now intends to fast until the execution.
Attorneys for Gardner have filed appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court hoping to block the execution.
The 49-year-old Gardner was sentenced to death in 1985 for the fatal shooting of an attorney during an attempted escape from the old Salt Lake City courthouse that same year.
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Who cares, *WE* want this sucker to die, so let's git it on!!!
They should have fed him for his last meal; dog doodoo pie ala mode, garnished with stale rat droppings, drizzled with just a hint of raw sewage. They could also put rotten maggot infested potatos on the side garnished with grass clippings from the city lawnmower.
By all accounts, Michael Burdell was a gentle soul with a soft spot for people in need.
A Vietnam veteran, he was issued a weapon but refused to carry it, serving as a technician on communications equipment, his fianc?e, Donna Nu, said in court documents.
The two had known each other for six years. Had Burdell, a 36-year-old attorney, not died on April 2, 1985, shot to death by Ronnie Lee Gardner during Gardner's escape attempt at a Salt Lake City courthouse, they would have been married.
But Nu, along with Burdell's friend, Ron Temu, and his 86-year-old father, Joseph Burdell, are now arguing on Gardner's behalf.
Gardner is to face a Utah firing squad on June 18. But driven by Burdell's pacifism and opposition to the death penalty, the three have filed statements in the case seeking to have his sentence commuted.
"Michael Burdell would not have wanted Ronnie Lee Gardner put to death," Nu said in court documents. "There is absolutely no question about this in my mind."
Michael Burdell Father, friend and fianc?e all are against Ronnie Gardner being put to death.
The constitution does not state that punishment cannot be painful, it only says that it cannot be cruel and unusual and certainly death by firing squad or lethal injection is not cruel or unusual.
And yet while millions are starving to death around this world we are putting a feast before convicted criminals to take one last step to show that we are 'humane.' How twisted is our thinking when we worry more about the convicted criminal and spend more on them than we do on the families and loved ones of those murdered.
If we spent less to coddle these criminals perhaps the thought of bleak prision life would be more of a deterent. As it is we spend enourmous sums to provide TV, Educational facilities, and a myriad of 'humane' benefits to those in prision including conjugal visits. Meanwhile we could be putting that same money to use better educating our young so that they can stay out of prision and letting them understand that prision isn't just another place to live, but a place you never never want to go - thus putting real meaning behind: "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."
Spare us. You right wing, death worshipers couldn't care less about the starving masses, indeed you vote for people based on their promise to make them suffer even more.
We are better than the criminals, most of us anyway, it is only the remaining unevolved who commit such crimes, and their equally unevolved peers, who then advocate the most uncivilized way of eliminating a threat to public safety, as if you have the right to cause additional unnecessary pain.
As far as the money, the right would instantly say that that money should go either for corporate welfare, or to killing innocents in unnecessary wars, and if neither expressed a need, then it should be used for tax rebates for the rich.
A prison is not just for the death of the inmates, there are thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands who are in there for crimes of survival, who can be and are regularly rehabilitated, and come out to be productive members of society, thus the need for educational facilities.
Perhaps in your "ideal world" you could be sentenced to death for selling a joint to a cop, or being caught with a hooker, but in a world evolving towards civilization, such advocacy is proof of ASPD.
New Rules, MINE: #1: TV dinners for last meals. Period. I don't care if they want turkey or Salisbury steak, but screw the expenses these guys have drained from the public coffers.
#2: Death penalty: Will take place within a THREE year max. All appeals must have been heard/presented; Mandatory DNA testing.
I say we make all max. security US prisons more like those of Peru....where the threat of going to one....IS THE deterrant effect! As would be the death penalty administered pronto. It DOES guarantee one thing: that the offender will NOT re-offend.
ps: I'd shoot this guy for free.
Again, "may the Lord have mercy on his soul and grant him peace!"
Go in peace, and keep putting green paper in the collection bin for the next time you act up.