January 17, 1977: The Execution of Gary Gilmore

January 17, 1977: Gary Gilmore is executed by firing squad at the Utah State Prison in Draper. He was 36 years old.

On June 2, 1967, Luis Monge was executed in a gas chamber in Colorado, for 4 murders. No more prisoners were executed, anywhere in America before June 29, 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in the case of Furman v. Georgia, that arbitrary and inconsistent imposition of the death penalty violated the 8th and 14th Amendments, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. All existing prisoners on "Death Row," anywhere in the country, had their sentences commuted to life.

On July 2, 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia, the Supreme Court reversed itself, given that the circumstances in the sentence handed on Troy Leon Gregg for a triple murder in North Carolina in 1973 had been properly decided, rather than being arbitrary. Gregg would be executed, in 1980, but would not be the next prisoner executed after the case named for him.

That would be Gilmore. The son of a con man, he was moved around a lot as a kid, as his father avoided the law. It was inevitable that he would become a criminal, and he went far beyond his father's petty con games, stealing cars and committing armed robberies.

On the evening of July 19, 1976, 17 days after the Gregg ruling (and thus making his case eligible for the death penalty), Gilmore robbed and murdered Max Jensen, a gas station employee in Orem, Utah. The next evening, 6 miles away in Provo, he robbed and murdered Bennie Bushnell, a motel manager. But while trying to dispose of his gun in the Provo garage where he parked his truck, Gilmore accidentally shot himself in the hand, leaving a trail of blood where the police could find it.

Gilmore's cousin, Brenda, turned him in to police shortly after he phoned her asking for bandages and painkillers for the injury to his hand. The Utah State Police apprehended Gilmore as he tried to drive out of Provo, and he gave up without attempting to flee. Although he was charged with the murders of Jensen and Bushnell, the Jensen case was never brought to trial, apparently due to there being no eyewitnesses.

His trial began at the Utah County Courthouse in Provo on October 5. Two days later, a guilty verdict and a death sentence were handed down. He chose not to appeal, and was resigned to his fate. Allowed to choose his method of execution, between hanging and shooting, Gilmore chose shooting, believing a hanging could be botched.

It was carried out on January 17, 1977. When a guard asked him if he had any last words, he said, "Just do it." Dan Wieden, founder of advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, credits Gilmore with inspiring Nike sneakers' "Just Do It" slogan.

The Rev. Thomas Meersman, the Catholic prison chaplain, administered the last rights. After the prison physician cloaked him in a black hood, Gilmore uttered his last words to Meersman: "Dominus vobiscum" -- Latin for "The Lord be with you." Meersman replied, "Et cum spiritu tuo." ("And with your spirit.") Five riflemen -- against tradition, all with live ammunition, instead of the usual one man with blanks, allowing each shooter to believe, "Maybe I didn't actually kill a man" -- fired at 8:07 AM Mountain Time. Gilmore died instantly.

In 1979, Norman Mailer published a novel about Gilmore, The Executioner's Song. In 1982, he turned it into a screenplay for an NBC movie starring Tommy Lee Jones, who won an Emmy Award for playing Gilmore.

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January 17, 1977 was a Monday. This was also the day of the U.S. Navy's Barcelona collision. I have a separate entry for that event.

Baseball and football were out of season. No games were scheduled for the NBA or the World Hockey Association. There was 1 game in the NHL, and it was an "Original Six" matchup: The Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens, 7-3 at the Boston Garden.