KSL journalists recall being witnesses at Utah’s last execution

SALT LAKE CITY — The last time the state of Utah put a prisoner to death was more than 14 years ago.

That will change this week as death row inmate Taberon Honie is set to be executed just after midnight Thursday.

But there will be some differences between the two executions.

At the last execution, in 2010, convicted murder Ronnie Lee Gardner was shot to death by firing squad.

“It was the first time I’d seen a firing squad execution,” said Pat Reavy, a reporter at KSL.com who witnessed the execution while working for the Deseret News.

Sheryl Worsley, who oversees KSL Podcasts, was also a journalist witness at the Gardner execution. She was the news director at KSL NewsRadio at the time.

“I think I’m changed after seeing something like that,” Worsley said. “I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.”

When a prisoner is executed in Utah, some of those who witness it are reporters. Asked how to process watching someone be put to death, Worsley said, “I don’t know that you fully process that.”

‘It caught me off guard’

The Gardner execution attracted a lot of publicity.

“There’s just more worldwide attention to a firing squad execution,” Reavy said.

And it left an impression on those who witnessed it.

“We were there probably, I don’t know, less than a minute, and it just went, boom, boom,” Worsley said. “No warning. So, it kind of was jarring. It caught me off guard.”

Unlike that one, the upcoming execution of Honie – who was convicted of murdering his girlfriend’s mother – will be carried out by lethal injection. It will also be the first execution at the new state prison, which opened in 2022.

Reavy has witnessed one lethal injection before in 1999 when Joseph Mitchell Parsons was executed.

“It’s less violent,” Reavy said of a lethal injection. “It’s more like almost a medical procedure where you see a person lying on a gurney with an IV attached to his arm.”

Reavy is set to be one of the Utah journalists witnessing Honie’s execution later this week.

Now that they’ve seen an execution by firing squad, is it something these journalists would want to personally witness again?

“For the sake of journalism, I would witness it,” Reavy said.

“If the opportunity came up, I would not volunteer for it,” Worsley added. “But if it meant a seat was going to go empty – a witness seat – I would do it again because we have an obligation to make sure when the state conducts someone’s death on our behalf, we need to be there to tell how it’s done.”