Capital Punishment In Utah
Capital punishment is legal in the U.S. state of Utah. Since 1850, a total of at least 50 individuals have been executed in Utah. A total of 9 people are under a sentence of death in the state as of June 20, 2010. The current method is lethal injection. Aggravated murder is the only crime subject to the penalty of death under Utah law.
Utah was the first state to resume executions after capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1976, when Gary Gilmore was executed by a firing squad on January 17, 1977. Gilmore, however, demanded his own execution, that is after being convicted of murder and sentenced to death. According to some the real end of national moratorium took place in Florida in 1979 with electrocution of John Arthur Spenkelink, who resisted his execution.
Read more about Capital Punishment In Utah: Capital Offenses, List of Individuals Executed in Utah Since 1976, Executions in Utah Before 1967
Famous quotes containing the words capital punishment, capital and/or punishment:
“Many of us do not believe in capital punishment, because thus society takes from a man what society cannot give.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)