Bishop John C. Wester

Execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner diminishes our society

By the time you read this, a firing squad will very likely have fired the shots to kill Ronnie Lee Gardner in the name of the State of Utah. Mr. Gardner was given the death penalty for killing attorney Michael Burdell on April 2, 1985, a terrible tragedy that compounded his 1984 killing of Melvyn John Otterstrom during a robbery. On Friday, June 18, Mr. Gardner’s appeals will no doubt have run out and he will have been executed. But while states have the right and the responsibility for protecting their residents, for Utah to take a life in our name diminishes all of us, because our society can clearly fulfill those obligations without resorting to the death penalty. From a purely economic viewpoint, it’s less expensive to incarcerate a murderer for life than to execute him. To those who would say that the cost is due to all the appeals, I would respond, “If you’re going to take a life you want to add to the appeals, not subtract from them, due to the gravity of the death penalty. And even then, despite all the technology, appeals and care taken, the state runs the risk of taking an innocent life, as has been shown by those on death row who have been exonerated.”