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Utah Attorney General Tweets About Killer's Execution

by Amar Toor on June 18, 2010 at 12:30 PM

tweet by mark shurtleff
After spending 25 years on death row, convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner was given the choice of how he would like to be killed. He could either take the more modern, less messy route, via lethal injection, or he could go out in front of a firing squad. Ultimately, Gardner chose the old school route, but Utah's attorney general took a decidedly more modern route in publicizing the man's demise.

Moments after Gardner was killed by police firing squad, attorney general Mark Shurtleff took to his Twitter account. "I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner's execution," Shurtleff tweeted. "May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims." The tweet was the second of a three-part series that the attorney general posted over the course of the execution. Earlier in the day, the attorney general expressed noticeably less exuberance about the event, tweeting, "A solemn day. Barring a stay by Sup Ct [US Supreme Court], & with my final nod, Utah will use most extreme power & execute a killer. Mourn his victims. Justice". His final tweet promoted an online stream of his post-execution press conference, which would go live, Shurtleff wrote, "as soon as I'm told Gardner is dead."


We understand that Gardner did some despicable things in his life, and Utah's courts obviously thought he deserved to die. But this isn't a sporting event, an awards show red carpet, or another Steve Jobs keynote address. It's the end of a human life and closure for victims. Not exactly the kind of thing that calls for a live blog. [From: The Telegraph and BBC]

Tags: Attorney general, AttorneyGeneral, capital punishment, CapitalPunishment, criminal, death, death penalty, DeathPenalty, execution, Mark Shurtleff, MarkShurtleff, ronnie lee gardner, RonnieLeeGardner, socialnetworking, top, tweet, tweets, twitter, utah, Utah State, UtahState, web

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