Utah is expected to execute death row inmate Taberon Honie this week, which would mark the first execution in the state since 2010. Before that, the most recent execution in Utah was in 1999.
Executions in Utah were not always so sporadic. Three took place in the ’90s alone, and the state was actually the first in the U.S. to resume executions after the federal ban on capital punishment was lifted in 1976.
But carrying out a death sentence generally takes a long time, when considering procedural processes and appeals. Honie, who is scheduled to die just after midnight Thursday, was sentenced to death in 1999.
To execute a prisoner, prosecutors need a judge to sign an execution warrant — a seemingly simple step that often takes years, if not decades, to achieve. This year, Utah judges signed two: one for Honie, 48, and one for death row inmate Ralph Menzies, 66.
Honie’s execution is expected to proceed Thursday after the state this month cleared several last-minute attempts to spare his life. He is the youngest inmate on Utah’s death row, and, at 25 years, he has spent the least amount of time awaiting his sentence.
Menzies’ sentence was meanwhile stalled earlier this year over concerns about his mental competency. He is one of seven people — including Honie — who currently remain on Utah’s death row. Collectively, they have been waiting an average of 32 years for their sentence to be carried out.
In the last six years, two death row inmates — Ronald Lafferty and Floyd Maestas — died of natural causes while awaiting their sentences. Since 2017, two former death row inmates — Elroy Tillman and James Holland — also died of natural causes; both had their sentences vacated and downgraded to life in prison before dying.
Until 2004, Utah sanctioned two methods of execution: lethal injection and firing squad. All seven men currently on death row were convicted prior to 2004, so each had the option of either method.
Two selected firing squad. Utah is only state to have used firing squads in modern executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Of the seven executions carried out in Utah since 1977, three involved death by firing squad.
In 2021, some Utah prosecutors led an effort to abolish capital punishment in the state. The bill would have replaced the death sentence with a 45-years-to-life prison term, but it failed to pass out of committee.
Who sits on Utah’s death row?
Taberon Honie
Age: 48
Sentencing date: May 20, 1999.
Method of execution: Lethal injection.
On the evening of July 9, 1998, Honie called his ex-girlfriend and demanded that she visit him at his new girlfriend’s house, threatening to kill her mother and her nieces and abscond with the pair’s young daughter if she didn’t. When she didn’t come, Honie called a cab to take him to the ex-girlfriend’s house.
There, Honie broke in while severely intoxicated, prosecutors said. The woman’s mother, Claudia Benn, tried to defend herself with a butcher knife, but Honie got control of it. He went on to beat, stab and mutilate Benn, killing her, according to court documents.
He later told investigators he hadn’t intended to kill Benn and regretted it. He was convicted of a single count of aggravated murder.
Ralph Leroy Menzies
Age: 66
Sentencing date: March 23, 1988.
Method of execution: Firing squad.
On Feb. 23, 1986, Maurine Hunsaker was working at a convenience store in Kearns when she disappeared. She called her husband later that night, saying, “They told me to tell you they robbed me and got me, and that I am fine and they are going to let me go sometime tonight,” according to court records.
Two days later, a hiker found her body about 3 miles up Big Cottonwood Canyon, near the Storm Mountain picnic area. Her throat had been cut, and marks on her wrists corresponded with scuffs on a nearby tree, suggesting she’d been tied there. The medical examiner found she’d been strangled.
The day before the discovery, police arrested Menzies on suspicion of burglary. Witnesses told investigators they’d seen Hunsaker with a man that matched Menzies’ description in the time between her disappearance and death. That and other evidence — like the cream-colored car Menzies had borrowed the night of Hunsaker’s disappearance, and her purse later found at Menzies’ home — ultimately linked Menzies to the kidnapping and murder.
He was convicted of aggravated murder, aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping.
Menzies has been awaiting capital punishment for 36 years. After his execution warrant was signed this year, his defense attorneys argued that he has dementia, citing medical records and raising concerns about his mental competency. His condition has also deteriorated since he fell from a ladder in 2018, they argued, noting he uses a walker around the prison and has lost 75 pounds over the past two years.
Troy Michael Kell
Age: 56
Sentencing date: Aug. 8, 1996.
Method of execution: Firing squad.
Kell is accused of killing another inmate while imprisoned at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Gunnison. He was there under an interstate trade agreement after being convicted of murder and robbery in Nevada.
Prosecutors argued Kell, a white supremacist who had previously been involved in “race-related altercations” with Black inmates, conspired with two other prisoners on July 6, 1994, to be transported to a medical unit with Lonnie Blackmon, who was Black.
There, Kell used a makeshift handcuff key to free himself and repeatedly slashed Blackmon with a shank for nearly three minutes. Blackmon, who remained handcuffed, could only kick back with his unbound feet. He was stabbed 67 times and bled to death.
Kell was convicted of aggravated murder and has been on death row for nearly 28 years.
Michael Anthony Archuleta
Age: 62
Sentencing date: Dec. 21, 1989.
Method of execution: Lethal injection.
Archuleta and another man met Gordon Ray Church at a convenience store in Cedar City on Nov. 21, 1988, before the trio decided to drive around in Church’s car. They later ended up in an area near Cedar Canyon, where Archuleta and Church decided to have sex.
At a certain point, Archuleta stopped and then began attacking Church, breaking his arm and carving an “X” across his throat. Archuleta and the other man then bound Church and stowed him in the trunk before driving north for approximately 76 miles to an area called “Dog Valley.”
There, Archuleta removed Church from the trunk and tortured him. Archuleta and the other man then dragged Church’s body to a hillside and attempted to obscure it with branches and dirt.
Archuleta was arrested soon after, when his accomplice confessed to police.
He has been on death row for nearly 35 years. His attorneys have contended that he has an intellectual disability and cannot legally be executed.
Von Lester Taylor
Age: 59
Sentencing date: May 24, 1991.
Method of execution: Lethal injection.
In December 1990, Taylor broke into a family’s cabin near Beaver Springs after leaving a halfway house, where he had been staying after being convicted of aggravated burglary. There, he waited with an accomplice for hours before the cabin owners arrived.
When Kaye Tiede walked in with her daughter and her mother, Beth Potts, Taylor shot and killed the two older women, and bound and gagged Tiede’s daughter.
When Tiede’s husband, Rolf, later arrived at the cabin with the couple’s other daughter, Taylor robbed him, shot him in the face and doused him in gasoline, then lit the cabin on fire and fled with his accomplice and the two Tiede children on snowmobiles and then a car. Police arrested both Taylor and his accomplice that day. Rolf Tiede survived the attack but suffered severe burns.
Taylor was charged with a slew of charges, including aggravated arson and aggravated kidnapping, but ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal homicide as part of a plea deal. A jury decided he should receive the death penalty.
A judge vacated his sentence in 2020 over concerns about Taylor’s public defender and skepticism about who actually fired the fatal shots, but the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the conviction. He has been awaiting his death sentence for 33 years.
Douglas Stewart Carter
Age: 68
Sentencing date: Dec. 27, 1985.
Method of execution: Lethal injection.
On Feb. 27, 1985, Orla Oleson discovered his wife, Eva, dead in their Provo home. She had been stabbed eight times and shot once in the back of her head in what investigators thought was a burglary attempt that turned deadly.
Investigators linked Carter to the homicide after a witness identified him as the suspect in an “automobile trespass” reported on the same day in the same general area, and after police received a tip that Carter’s wife had rushed home after learning of the death, worried her husband was involved, court records state. Detectives later found bloodstained clothing and ammunition similar to what was used to shoot Eva Oleson.
Carter’s sentence and convictions were vacated by a 4th District Court judge in November 2022, after determining Provo police and prosecutors had engaged in misconduct, including threatening a key witness with arrest and deportation and giving him thousands of dollars before Carter’s 1985 trial.
The Utah Supreme Court heard arguments for reinstating his death sentence in December. They have yet to rule. Carter in the meantime has remained on death row for 38 years.
Douglas Lovell
Age: 66
Sentencing date: Aug. 5, 1993.
Method of execution: Lethal injection.
Lovell saw Joyce Yost for the first time on April 4, 1985, as she left a restaurant, then followed her as she drove home. He approached her in the driveway and asked her to have a drink with him. When she refused, Lovell forced her into the car and took her to his house in Clearfield, where he raped her. She reported the crimes to police, and Lovell was charged.
Before that case had a preliminary hearing, Lovell twice sought out prison friends and offered them money to kill Yost. When the murder-for-hire attempts failed, Lovell decided to kill Yost himself.
On Aug. 10, 1985, Lovell’s friend drove him to Yost’s apartment, where he broke in and threatened her with a knife. He ultimately packed a suitcase to make it seem like Yost had left intentionally, then drove her to a canyon near Ogden, where he said he strangled her and left her body. Her body was never found.
Lovell was convicted of murder a few years later. He has been sentenced twice — in 1993 and in 2015. The Utah Supreme Court overturned his sentence again in July, ruling that his attorneys provided ineffective counsel when they did not object to court testimony about Lovell’s excommunication from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The high court did not overturn his murder conviction, and he will be resentenced. In the meantime, Lovell has remained on death row for 31 years.
When were Utah’s last executions?
- Ronnie Lee Gardner: June 18, 2010, via firing squad.
- Joseph Mitchel Parsons: Oct. 15, 1999, via lethal injection.
- John Albert Taylor: Jan. 26, 1996, via firing squad.
- William Andrews: July 30, 1992, via lethal injection.
- Gary Arthur Bishop: June 10, 1988, via lethal injection.
- Pierre Dale Selby: Aug. 28, 1987, via lethal injection.
- Gary Gilmore: Jan. 17, 1977, via firing squad.
