Attorneys for Utah inmate set for firing squad execution to make final clemency appeal Friday

Utah firing-squad inmate making clemency appeal

DRAPER, Utah — Attorneys for a Utah inmate set to die by firing squad next week were to make a final appeal for clemency to the state parole board.

Ronnie Lee Gardner, whose execution is set for June 18, wants the five-member Utah Board of Pardons and Parole to commute his death sentence to life in prison.

His two-day commutation hearing was scheduled to end Friday. On Thursday, Gardner told the board he had changed and wants to dedicate his life to helping at-risk youth avoid making the kind of mistakes that put him on death row.

Three members of the board would have to vote for clemency for the sentence to be commuted. The panel plans to announce its decision Monday.

State attorneys object to commutation. On Thursday, Assistant Utah Attorney General Thomas Brunker said Gardner “earned his death sentence for an unflagging history of violent crime.”

Gardner, 49, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1985 for the fatal shooting of attorney Michael Burdell earlier that year. Gardner shot Burdell while trying to escape from custody at a Salt Lake City courthouse; he was at the courthouse for a hearing on charges that he murdered a bartender, Melvyn Otterstrom, the previous year.

Utah law allowed him to chose a firing squad rather than lethal injection because he was sentenced before 2004, when lethal injection became the state’s default execution method.

The commutation hearing is one of several avenues attorneys for Gardner have pursued since a warrant for his execution was signed in April.

Earlier this week, attorneys for Gardner asked the Utah Supreme Court to vacate his sentence and order a new sentencing hearing so that a jury could consider mitigating evidence from Gardner’s troubled life — early drug addiction, physical and sexual abuse and possible organic brain damage — uncovered during a federal appeal in 1999.

Gardner’s attorney, Andrews Parnes, said he believes that a jury’s knowledge of that information could have produced a different sentence.

It’s unclear when the high court will rule.

On Thursday, Gardner acknowledged that for most of his life he was an impulsive, unapologetic person who looked for trouble. That changed in 1999 as he met with psychologists and began to understand the damages wrought by his dysfunctional family life, Gardner said.

“I’m really remorseful,” Gardner said, acknowledging that he had no reasons for killing either Otterstrom or Burdell.

Gardner also told the board that over the past 10 years, he and his brother have developed plans for an organic farm and residential program for troubled youth on a 160-acre parcel in northern Utah. He said he had earned some $1,300 from selling his artwork and handmade crafts to fund the program and tried garner support for his idea from Oprah Winfrey in 2008.

“I don’t want to live for the sake of living,” Gardner said. “If I can help somebody and be a positive influence, that’s what I want.”