Gary Gilmore

Gary Mark Gilmore (December 4, 1940 – January 17, 1977) was a career criminal who was the first person legally executed in the United States after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Gilmore was convicted of killing Ben Bushnell, a motel manager, in Provo, Utah on July 20, 1976; he had also been charged with murdering a gas station employee in Orem, Utah, the previous day, but that case never went to trial apparently because there were no witnesses to the first killing. Gilmore's trial was held from October 5 to October 7, 1976 which he was quickly convicted of the murder, mostly because there was no defense on his part. The jury also recommended the death penalty for Gilmore due to the special circumstances to the crime. Because Utah then had two methods of execution, firing squad or death by hanging, Gilmore was given a choice, in which he replied, "I'd prefer to be shot."

Back in 1972 the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972), effectively invalidating almost all laws regarding capital punishment in the United States. In response to that decision, 35 states (including Utah) enacted revised death penalty statutes intended to eliminate arbitrariness in capital sentencing. After the Supreme Court validated those laws in 1976, the state of Utah was able to proceed with the execution of Gilmore due to his refusal to contest his conviction and sentence.

Gary Mark Gilmore was born in a rural Texas town in December 1940, the second of four sons. His parents drifted around the country most of the time while he and his older and two younger brothers were growing up with his father peddling and scaming people with phony magazine and newspaper subscriptions. The Gilmore family settled in Portland, Oregon in the early 1950s where Gary Gilmore began getting to trouble with the law several times for charges ranging from shoplifing to assault and battery charges. He dropped out of high school at age 15 and drifed across the Midwest making a living out of robbing houses and stores. He was convicted of armed robbery in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1964, and received an 18-year prison sentence. He was conditioninally paroled in March 1976 and was sent to Provo, Utah to live with a distant cousin of his whom tried to help him find work and make a living for himself. But Gilmore's self-destructive nature soon got the best of him, as he coundn't stay away from the quick and easy life of crime as he saw it. Gilmore began stealing money and items from stores and peoples houses, climaxing that July with him murdering the two men previously mensioned in the two seperate robberties. Having spent most of his adult life in and out of prison, and now convicted of committing murder, Gilmore pressed the courts for his execution to be carried out at once, apparently not wanting to spend the rest of his life incarcerated.

Gilmore was shot by a firing squad on January 17, 1977 after angrily telling his lawyers to drop the appeals they had filed in defiance of his wishes. On the cold winter morning on January 17, 1977 after Gilmore requested an all-night gathering of friends and family at the prison mess hall, where he enjoyed a last meal consisting of a hamburger, hard-boiled eggs, a baked potato, a few cups of coffee, and three shots of whiskey, he was taken to an abandoned cannery behind the prison which served as the prison's death house. He was strapped to a chair, with a wall of sandbags placed behind him to absorb the projectiles of the bullets. Five prison guards stood concealed behind a curtain with five small holes cut for them to place their rifles through which were aimed at him. Gilmore's last words were: "Let's do it."

During the three months Gilmore was on death row awaiting his execution, he attempted suicide twice. The first was on November 16, 1976 and the second was a month later on December 16. The execution was stayed three times. While incarcerated, Gilmore developed a deep dislike for two of his fellow inmates, convicted murderers and rapists Dale Selby Pierre and William Andrews, the "Hi-Fi Murderers." Gilmore had to pass the men's cells on his way to the firing squad, and as he was led past he laughed at the men and uttered his final words to his fellow inmates, "I'll see you in Hell, Andrews and Pierre!"

Gilmore requested that, following his execution, his eyes be used for transplant purposes. Within hours of the execution, two people received his corneas, inspiring the British punk rock band The Adverts to write and release "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" later that year. The Oakland-based performance artist Monte Cazazza sent out photos of himself in an electric chair on the day of Gilmore's execution. One of these was mistakenly printed in a Hong Kong newspaper as the real execution.

Gilmore's story is documented in Norman Mailer's fictional novel The Executioner's Song (1979), which was adapted by Mailer for the 1982 television movie of the same name starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore. Jones won an Emmy for his portrayal of Gilmore. Gilmore is also the main character of artist Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2 (1999), the 2nd part of The Cremaster Cycle.

A December 11, 1976 episode of Saturday Night Live featured the cast singing a Christmas-themed medley enitled "Let's Kill Gary Gilmore For Christmas." Among its more memorable lyrics are set to "Winter Wonderland": "In the meadow we can build a snowman/One with Gary Gilmore packed inside/We'll ask him, "Are you dead yet?" He'll say, 'No, man'/But we'll wait out the frostbite 'till he dies."

One of Gilmore's brothers, Mikal, wrote a memoir, Shot In The Heart, that chronicles his relationship with his brother, and their often troubled family history. In 2001, it was made into an HBO movie starring Giovanni Ribisi, Elias Koteas, and Sam Shepard.

According to Mikal Gilmore's memoir, Utah's tradition dictated that five men comprise a firing squad - four of them with loaded rifles and one with a gun containing a blank, so as to not know who fired the fatal shot. Upon inspecting the clothes worn by Gary Gilmore at his execution, Mikal noticed five holes in the shirt - indicating, he wrote, that "[t]he state of Utah, apparently, had taken no chances on the morning that it put my brother to death" (p. 390).

See also

• John Albert Taylor
• List of individuals executed in Utah
• Capital punishment in the United States

External link

• Gary Gilmore (on Crime Library).