Capital Punishment Utah

If all goes according to plan, four days from now John Albert Taylor will eat a pizza, smoke a cigarette, then be strapped into a chair and shot in the heart for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Charla King in 1989. If a bill to be introduced this month in the Legislature becomes law, the 36-year-old Taylor may be the last person executed by firing squad in the United States.

If all goes according to plan, four days from now John Albert Taylor will eat a pizza, smoke a cigarette, then be strapped into a chair and shot in the heart for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Charla King in 1989. If a bill to be introduced this month in the Legislature becomes law, the 36-year-old Taylor may be the last person executed by firing squad in the United States.

A federal appeals court stayed the execution of William Andrews just three days before he was to die in Utah by lethal injection for three 1974 torture-killings dubbed the "hi-fi murders." A three-judge panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the stay for Andrews, the nation's longest-standing death row inmate, after failed appeals in federal and state courts and the state Board of Pardons' rejection of his plea for clemency on Friday.

A federal appeals court stayed the execution of William Andrews just three days before he was to die in Utah by lethal injection for three 1974 torture-killings dubbed the "hi-fi murders." A three-judge panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the stay for Andrews, the nation's longest-standing death row inmate, after failed appeals in federal and state courts and the state Board of Pardons' rejection of his plea for clemency on Friday.