Utah officials share how Taberon Honie has spent his final day before his expected lethal injection

Update • Utah executes Taberon Honie by lethal injection

Taberon Honie visited with his parents and other family members throughout the day Wednesday in what were expected to be his final hours before his lethal injection execution later in the night.

His final meal, prison officials said, was a cheeseburger, fries and a milkshake — though Honie expressed to them that he wanted his last meal to be remembered as one he had recently shared with his family, said Glen Mills, who is the Department of Corrections communications director.

Honie’s mood throughout the day, Mills said, has been described by prison staff as “gracious and appreciative.”

The 48-year-old man has been in an observation cell since just after 6 a.m. on Wednesday, and Mills said he has mostly spent the day visiting with his family. He is expected to be executed just after midnight on Thursday — Utah’s first execution in 14 years.

Honie shared tearful final goodbyes with his family members before visiting ended at 9 p.m., Mills said. He listened to music on a tablet for a few minutes after his family left, Mills said, before talking with his legal team.

Honie is expected to sit alone in the observation cell for about 90 minutes before he is led into the death chamber. Mills said Honie will have that time to separate himself from the emotions surrounding seeing his family for the last time.

“It’s time to reflect on that,” he said. “To take it in and be on your own to think about what’s happening.”

Mills said Wednesday evening that since Honie’s attorneys left, he has spent his time lying on his bed, listening to music. He declined an offer to take the anxiety medication Valium, according to Mills.

Honie has been on death row for more than 25 years after he sexually assaulted and killed his ex-girlfriend’s mother, Claudia Benn, who was his own daughter’s grandmother, in 1998.

By 11:30 p.m., 25 to 30 protesters were in a designated free speech area about two miles from the Salt Lake City prison. Standing under police lights, being swarmed with mayflies, Janell Wilson of Layton said she doesn’t support the death penalty.

“I understand that this man did something very bad when he was young,” she said, “but in all reality I don’t think him killing one person warrants us to say we can kill him.”

An execution is a rare event in Utah. The last time the state executed a man was in 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was killed by firing squad. Utah’s last lethal injection death was in 1999.

Gardner’s brother, Randy Gardner, was at the free speech zone Wednesday night. He said he has never supported the death penalty, and pointed out that South Carolina’s Supreme Court recently ruled that executions by firing squad (or lethal injection or the electric chair) are constitutional. He had hoped there would never be another firing squad in the U.S. after his brother’s execution, he said.

“I like being the one saying my brother was the last person executed by firing squad, but that could change,” he said. " ... We shouldn’t be executing our own people.”

The prisons in Salt Lake City and Gunnison have both been locked down Wednesday until the completion of the execution, which is expected to begin shortly after midnight. The execution is happening at night, Mills said, to minimize disruptions to other inmates. The prisons are generally locked down nightly at 10 p.m., he added.

Members of the public who wanted to demonstrate about the death penalty or Honie’s execution — in support or opposition — were allowed to gather in the free speech area at 7800 West 700 North.

This will be the first execution at the new prison location, which opened in 2022.

A group of anti-death penalty advocates unsuccessfully challenged in 3rd District Court Wednesday the location of the free speech area. They argued in their request for an injunction that the zone is in a “completely uninhabited area,” away from residences, businesses and outside the view of the prison, which they contended violates their rights to free speech.

“It is impossible to see the prison from this location. Hence, it is impossible to be seen by anyone at the prison whether they be prison staff, guards, volunteers, inmates, or the general public,” the document states.

Judge Laura Scott denied the request Wednesday evening, saying attorney Tyler Ayers hadn’t properly filed the request and that she couldn’t determine from the “very limited information provided” whether the protest zone’s location “burdens substantially more speech than necessary.”

The advocates had asked for an alternative protest area to be established closer to the prison, though still outside the facility’s gates. “In short, allowing the parties to demonstrate in this location creates an opportunity for free speech as opposed to eliminating all likelihood in the currently proposed Free Speech Zone,” the filing said.

Randy Gardner was one of the plaintiffs. “We should be able to be closer to the prison,” he said in the zone Wednesday night. At his brother’s execution, he said, protesters were allowed to gather across the street from the former prison in Draper.

Mills said the majority of the land near the prison is private property, limiting where officials could establish the free speech area. He also said the planned location was made public about two months ago.

“We understand and value the right to demonstrate both for and against the death penalty,” Mills said. “We found the closest and safest and most reasonable space to allow for protesters.”

Randy Gardner held a large sign that said, “All life is precious,” in the zone Wednesday night. SueZann Bosler, co-founder of Journey of Hope, held up the other side.

Bosler started advocating against the death penalty after she and her father were both assaulted by someone with a knife, she said. Her father died and she survived. She said it was his wish that his assailant not be executed, and it took her years to fully accept and share his belief.

Now she travels the country with other anti-death penalty advocates to protest capital punishment and, she hopes, eventually to help end it. ”I’m a victim survivor, that’s why I’m still here, is I’m going to abolish the death penalty,” she said.

She also took issue with the site of the free speech zone, saying she and other advocates held signs outside the prison on Tuesday. Why couldn’t they have returned there Wednesday night, she asked, also questioning the choice to execute Honie at midnight — “so that not as many people go (protest),” she said.

At the Capitol earlier Wednesday, about a dozen anti-death penalty advocates also called for an end to capital punishment in Utah. They said they collected thousands of signatures urging state leaders to halt all executions, including Honie’s planned lethal injection.

“The death penalty does nothing but repay suffering with suffering,” said the Rev. Kenneth Vialpando, the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City’s vicar for the clergy. “It does not provide justice, does not restore dignity, does not make us safer as a society.”

Vialpando was one of nearly 100 faith and community leaders who signed the petition, organizers said. A planned protest and vigil is expected in the free speech zone location beginning at about 11 p.m. Wednesday.

Randy Gardner also was one of the petitioners. He said at the afternoon protest that he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after his brother’s 2010 execution.

“That day is one that lives on forever,” he said Wednesday. “... Hopefully one day in the near future, Utah will step it up and end sanctioned murders.”

The letter that petitioners signed stated “we most certainly are not opposed to accountability for rightfully convicted persons.”

“However, we believe that the death penalty serves no moral purpose and executions are not necessary to keep society safe or to hold accountable those who have committed horrible crimes,” it continued.

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 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 daughter and a child that he also sexually assaulted that same evening.

A judge sentenced Honie to death in 1999, and he has been appealing that decision ever since — including several efforts in recent weeks where he asked Utah’s parole board for clemency and filed a lawsuit challenging the untested three-drug combination prison officials initially planned to use in his execution.

The parole board declined to commute his sentence. And prison officials changed course on the drugs, opting instead to pay $200,000 to obtain the nervous system depressant pentobarbital. That drug has been used in executions in other states, and acts as both the anesthetic to ensure that Honie does not feel pain and as the fatal drug that will kill him. A judge last week dismissed his lawsuit.

In a news release Wednesday, nonprofit Restoring Ancestral Winds honored Benn, who they said was a member of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah. The tribal coalition works to address domestic violence and sexual assault in the Great Basin region of Utah, and in its statement, highlighted the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous relatives in the state.

“While Honie is scheduled for execution, the impact of his actions will continue to resonate deeply with those who knew and loved Claudia,” the release stated. “She was a beloved mother and grandmother and a beacon of strength and resilience in her community.”

The statement added that the children who witnessed the attack still bear “emotional and psychological scars” that continue to be a “painful reminder of the ongoing consequences of this tragic event.”

Honie will be brought from the observation cell into the execution room and secured to a gurney. A team will then set up an IV line before curtains are opened for witnesses to observe the execution. Those witnesses will include reporters, law enforcement and possibly Utah’s attorney general, Honie’s chosen witnesses and possibly Benn’s close family members.

Honie will be given two minutes to say any last words before the execution begins. The execution team, according to prison protocols, should include at least two members who are either trained as a phlebotomist, emergency medical technician, paramedic or military corpsman.

Honie is one of seven men who have been sentenced to death in Utah and are currently in various stages of appealing their sentences. One man, Douglas Carter, had his death sentence vacated in 2022 after a judge found Provo police and prosecutors engaged in misconduct. Another man, Douglas Lovell, recently was granted a new sentencing hearing after the Utah Supreme Court ruled that religion had been improperly brought into his 2015 re-trial.

Correction • Aug. 7, 2024, 6 p.m.: This story has been updated to reflect the injunction was filed in 3rd District Court.