When Taberon Honie brutally killed his ex-girlfriend’s mother — his own daughter’s grandmother —Claudia Benn’s relatives say it tore their families apart.
The 1998 murder ripped open generational wounds in her Paiute community, according to tribal leaders.
And for more than 25 years, those who loved Benn have had to live without her — the smart, strong woman who worked as an addiction counselor for her tribe, the auntie who hosted movie nights, the mother and grandmother who loved deeply.
Now, when Benita Yracheta thinks of her mother, she thinks of a bloody crime scene.
“Taberon, you robbed us,” Betsy China, Benn’s cousin, said Tuesday. “Totally robbed us.”
China and her family members spoke on Tuesday during a commutation hearing for Honie, who has been on Utah’s death row for 25 years after sexually assaulting and killing Benn in her Cedar City home.
He’s asked Utah’s parole board to stop his upcoming execution by lethal injection, which is currently scheduled in 16 days, and allow him to spend the rest of his life in prison. On Monday, he questioned whether he deserved their mercy after killing Benn, but ultimately asked the parole board: “Would you allow me to exist?”
But China and other members of Benn’s family tearfully urged board members Tuesday to let Honie’s sentence stand, and for the execution to move forward.
“You have been provided 25 years of incarceration, and you want more. Personally, I think that we should just close the book,” China said, speaking directly to Honie. “My choice would be the death penalty. Just get this over.”
Asking Utah’s parole board for clemency is one of Honie’s last chances to try to stop his execution. On Monday, his legal team presented expert testimony about the traumatic childhood that the 48-year-old man, who is from the Hopi-Tewa community, experienced while growing up on an Arizona reservation — which he said contributed to alcohol and drug abuse at an early age.
These experiences, along with a number of head injuries he received as a child, had a “synergistic effect” with his “extreme intoxication” on the July night in 1998 when he killed Benn, his attorneys argued in his commutation petition.
The attorney general’s office argued in response on Tuesday that the judge’s decision to sentence Honie to death in 1999 shouldn’t be questioned — and that he deserved to die for what he did to Benn.
Now it’s up to the parole board members to decide whether to grant Honie clemency. It’s unknown when they’ll announce their decision, but the board has said it can make its determination before the scheduled Aug. 8 execution. Board Chair Scott Stephenson said Tuesday that this isn’t a decision they are taking lightly.
“For me, with each passing minute, the weight of this decision, I start to really feel,” he said Tuesday at the end of the commutation hearing. “Whenever you have the opportunity to look somebody in the eye, it has an emotional impact on you.”
‘Auntie Dee’
To her nieces, she wasn’t called Claudia Benn. She was Auntie Dee.
And Auntie Dee, Sarah China remembered, could be strict. “She wanted the best for me,” the woman remembered, describing how her aunt cared for her as their family struggled with alcoholism.
Trevia Wall remembered how her Auntie Dee inspired her, and supported her when she wanted to compete in her tribe’s Queen and Princess pageants. She remembers how her aunt told her that whatever she did, not to say “um” when she spoke during the competition.
“She helped me know my strength, my confidence,” Wall said. “To be proud of who I am and where I came from. And to always know my worth.”
Sarah China recalled Tuesday how they had a “auntie and niece” day for her 18th birthday, watching movies together, “vegged out.” She was still 18, she remembered, when her aunt died.
She worked with her cousin, Honie’s ex-girlfriend. And Sarah China remembered Honie calling her cousin on July 9, 1998, demanding that she see him and threatening to kill Benn if she didn’t. She didn’t go, and went to work instead.
Later that evening, sometime before midnight, Honie took a cab to Benn’s home. He broke the door in with a rock and then Honie beat and bit her, slashed her throat, stabbed her genitals multiple times, and had prepared to have anal sex with her before realizing she had died. Three children were in the home during the attack, including his young daughter and a child that he also sexually assaulted that same evening.
When Sarah China found out the next morning that Benn had been killed, she pleaded with her mother to take her to her aunt’s home, telling her over and over, “I want to see my auntie.”
“We busted in the door and there was blood all over the damn house,” Sarah China said between sobs. “She fought for her life. She saved her grandkids, too. That’s a strong Paiute woman right there.”
Sarah China said her aunt’s death filled her with anger, and she became “the worst alcoholic of my life, ever.” Even 25 years later, both Sarah China and her mother, Betsy, said they are taken aback when they think about the crime and the way Honie sexually violated Benn.
“I think of the brutality of the murder and the disrespect for the female anatomy,” Betsy China said to Honie on Tuesday. “How could you violate and cut, and then want to penetrate? It was unbelievable to show such disrespect to any woman.”
‘Honie deserved death’
When a judge sentenced Honie to death in 1999, he kept a tally of “aggravating” factors in Honie’s crimes that would tip the scale towards ordering a death sentence, and what other factors existed which would be considered “mitigating” and possibly indicate that his life should be spared.
Daniel Boyer, a lawyer with the Utah attorney general’s office, ticked off that list on Tuesday during his closing argument.
Aggravating factors: That Honie murdered Benn while engaged in object rape, aggravated sexual assault and aggravated burglary; that Honie a few years prior beat up his ex-girlfriend; that children were present during Benn’s murder; that Honie also sexually assaulted one of those children; that Benn’s death was such a loss to her community.
Mitigating factors: That Honie suffered from alcoholism and depression; that at 22, he was relatively young when he killed Benn; that Honie did not have significant criminal history; that Honie was kind as a child, carrying water and chopping wood for elderly women on his reservation; that Honie’s family loved and supported him; that he showed remorse.
But ultimately, Boyer argued, the judge found that the aggravating circumstances outweighed those mitigating factors, and a death sentence was warranted. That decision, he argued, should not be second-guessed now, all these years later.
“The judge already considered the core of all of this before sentencing him to death,” Boyer argued. “The balance of aggravating and mitigating evidence remains the same today as it did in 1999.”
“Honie deserved death then,” Boyed added. “And nothing has changed.”
But Therese Day, one of Honie’s attorneys, said they weren’t asking the board to change the balance of aggravating and mitigating factors that the judge weighed years ago. They were there to ask the parole board for mercy, to give a man who has limited disciplinary history since he entered the prison system a chance to keep living, so he can continue to be a support to his daughter and granddaughter.
It’s a request that Honie has struggled with, Day concedes, because he thinks he deserves nothing after killing Benn.
“He’s asking you to allow him to live,” Day said, “so the rest of his family do not suffer more than they already have.”