Killer Ronnie Lee Gardner is shot by firing squad

At just after 7.0am today British time, the triple-murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner was shot by firing squad in Utah, the first man to meet his death this way in the United States in 14 years. He spent his final hours in his cell at the Utah Department of Corrections watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD and talking with his Mormon bishop. He was described as being "relaxed" by jail authorities.

Gardner was executed by a squad of five unidentified marksmen in a specially designed chamber in the jail, lined with sandbags to prevent ricochets. He was hooded and seated, with a target pinned to his chest.

Four of their rifles were loaded with live bullets but a fifth carried a blank. This way, none of the five men would know for certain whether he had shot a lethal round.

Gardner went to his fate after the US Supreme Court denied his final request for a stay of execution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, recently appointed to the bench by President Obama, reviewed a trio of appeals from the condemned man, but denied each of them late yesterday.

Gardner had been on death row since he killed his defence lawyer, Michael Burdell, while trying to escape from a courthouse in Salt Lake City in 1985.

He was on trial at the time for the murder of a barman called Melvyn Otterstrom. In the course of his escape bid, he also shot a bailiff, Nick Kirk, who died from his injuries 10 years later.
 
Utah is one of only two states - the other is Oklahoma - which continued to offer the firing squad as an alternative to lethal injection until recently. It was withdrawn as an option in 2004, but death row prisoners sentenced before then may still opt for it.
 
Gardner was the third person to be executed by firing squad in north America since the death penalty was restored in 1976. Both previous executions - that of double-murderer Gary Gilmore in 1977 and the rapist-killer John Taylor in 1996 - were in Utah.

Taylor famously ordered "pizza with everything" for his final meal. Gardner chose nothing last night, having begun a fast on Tuesday which he adhered to until the end. ·