Friday, June 18, 2010

Under cover of darkness

A blacked out van picks up five men who have trained shooting at human targets for months. Their names aren't recorded anywhere - nor is where they came from. They are paid in cash, anonymously, so there are no records. The van picks them up in the middle of the night and drives them to a rural location where a man is brought out and secured to a chair in front of a cinder block wall lined with sandbags. 


The five men line up behind a wall and slide their rifles through a hole. The man in the chair has a target placed over his heart and a black hood over his head. On the signal, all five men fire at once -- four of the rifles have live ammunition while the fifth is loaded with a blank. And that's it. 


The man in the chair tenses just before the shots are fired and goes limp shortly afterward.


The five anonymous men then pack up their rifles and are taken away.

A hit on a Mexican drug lord? A mob execution of a snitch? No. An execution by firing squad in Utah.

See also:

"Ronnie Lee Gardner: Is Utah firing squad a more humane execution?" Christian Science Monitor (6/17/2010)
"Ronnie Lee Gardner execution: Brother, daughter allowed 1 last hug through prison bars" Deseret News (6/17/2010)
"Utah executes Ronnie Lee Gardner by firing squad" New York Daily News (6/18/2010)