Utah Gov. Spencer Cox will not stop Taberon Honie’s execution this week, telling the death row inmate’s legal team in a letter released Tuesday that he doesn’t believe temporarily halting his lethal injection is warranted.
Honie had asked Cox to temporarily delay his execution this week so prison officials have more time to make sure the lethal injection will be done safely, calling the planning process rushed and shrouded in secrecy. In Cox’s response letter, he pushed back on that claim.
“The Department [of Corrections] has gone above and beyond in planning and preparing for Mr. Honie’s execution,” the governor wrote, adding that many of the issues that Honie’s legal team raised in their request had already been settled in court.
Cox does have the authority to temporarily stop an execution — something he said he “doesn’t take lightly.”
“In making this decision, I am mindful of the fact that Mr. Honie has had every opportunity to challenge his sentence since it was imposed 25 years ago, in litigation and before the Board of Pardons and Parole,” his letter reads. “It is my understanding that Mr. Honie has exhausted his appeals before our state courts. He also had a commutation hearing before the Board of Pardons and Parole. The Board declined to commute his sentence.”
Honie’s legal team sent a two-page letter to the governor late last week asking for a temporary reprieve, saying the prison’s rush to execute him “risks dangerous outcomes.” He is scheduled to be executed this Thursday just after midnight.
Glen Mills, communications director for the Department of Corrections, disagreed in a Monday statement with the defense’s description of execution planning. “We have been meticulously planning this process for several months,” Mills said.
“We understand the defense has a job to do, but the narrative of a rushed, and even reckless process is false,” he added. “... We are approaching our responsibility with the utmost care and professionalism.”
Honie’s lawyers had asked the governor to use his power to halt the execution and order a review of the prison’s execution procedures. They say it’s been done before, pointing to a time in 2022 when Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey put executions on hold and ordered a “top-to-bottom” review after a failed execution attempt.
“Other Republican governors have stepped in to make sure that their corrections departments have adequate time to prepare for executions,” they wrote.
[Read more: Death penalty in Utah: Who is condemned to die on death row? How often are prisoners executed?]
Honie’s lawyers wrote that since the Utah attorney general office’s office sought an execution warrant for their client over three months ago, prison officials have changed the drugs they intend to use to kill Honie three times.
First, they were planning to use an unspecified drug combination, according to Honie’s legal team — details of which are not known because the lawyers say prison officials refuse to declassify relevant documents.
Then, the department changed course — announcing it would use an untested combination of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride. This was decided in consultation with an unnamed pharmacist who said pentobarbital, a commonly used death penalty drug, was unavailable.
But Honie sued over this drug combination, arguing that it put him at risk of a torturous death in violation of the state’s constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. So the state changed its plans for a third time, the letter explains, announcing it would be able to obtain pentobarbital in time for Honie’s Aug. 8 execution. Pentobarbital is the authorized lethal injection drug in at least 10 other states.
Honie’s lawyers wrote that the entire process has been secretive, due to a new law change that was added to an otherwise uncontroversial corrections bill earlier this year. That law now prohibits the public from knowing the identities of anyone who participates in an execution, including the persons who manufacture or prescribe the death drugs.
So while the public knows that the state plans to pay $200,000 for the drug, no one knows who the state is paying or any other details about the transaction. And Honie’s lawyers, they say in their letter, haven’t been given access to any original documentation verifying the drug source’s licensing, or details about how the drug is being stored.
“Transparency is the hallmark of a free society,” the letter reads, “yet this process has been anything but transparent. The Department’s current plan, announced less than two weeks ago, leaves less than three weeks for prison personnel to prepare for Mr. Honie’s execution.”
State law requires Corrections to use sodium thiopental or an equally effective substance. Since sodium thiopental has not been available for years, Mills said, “We consulted with medical professionals on several different combinations before determining the best method would be the originally proposed three-drug combination.”
The decision was “immediately released” to the public, he noted. And then, he added: “Acknowledging the novelty, and a likely lengthy legal battle we agreed to change to pentobarbital,” which Honie’s lawyers had said would be “an acceptable alternative.”
The judge who rejected Honie’s lawsuit over the state’s execution protocols said “that not only have we not violated Mr. Honie’s rights” Mills said, “but we have provided more information than necessary.”
Honie has been on death row for more than 25 years. In July 1998, Honie called his ex-girlfriend and demanded she visit him, threatening to kill her family if she refused. Later that evening, Honie took a cab to the home of Claudia Benn, his ex-girlfriend’s mother. He broke the door in with a rock and then beat and bit Benn, slashed her throat, stabbed her genitals multiple times and prepared to have anal sex with her before realizing she had died. Three children were in the home during the attack, including his daughter and a child that he also sexually assaulted that evening.
Honie’s lawyers also wrote in their letter to Cox that prison officials have refused to update its execution protocols from a 2010 version — an argument which they also made in Honie’s recently dismissed lawsuit.
The old protocols include steps for executing someone with a different drug than what prison officials plan to use in Honie’s execution, his attorneys wrote. And rather than updating the protocol — which could lead to new opportunities for Honie to appeal — prison officials instead have drafted additional instructions as other documents, which his lawyers say conflict with one another and risk confusion during the execution process.
This rush to execute, the attorneys wrote wrote, is because of a court-imposed deadline to execute Honie on Aug. 8, after the attorney general’s office in April sought a death warrant. The death row inmate’s attorneys noted that the attorney general’s office didn’t give prison officials any advance notification before seeking the execution warrant, “leaving them unaware of the execution timeline and resulting in repeated changes to the intended execution method during the last few months.” (Prison officials have said they were notified last year that the attorney general’s office was planning to seek two death warrants, but were not informed when the motion was actually filed in Honie’s case.)
The last execution in Utah happened in 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was killed by a firing squad. Honie’s death, if it is carried out, will mark the first time that Utah officials have killed someone by lethal injection in 25 years.