Gary Mark Gilmore, before the Utah Board of Pardons, November 1976: He said the people of Utah seemed to want the death penalty but not executions, and that when they sentenced him he took them literally and seriously. Of those trying to save him: “This is my life and this is my death.” (Chapter 5)
Gary Mark Gilmore, asked for his last words, January 17, 1977: “Let’s do it.” (Chapter 5)
John Albert Taylor, on choosing the rifle over the needle, 1996: He said he feared “flipping around like a fish out of water.” Asked in the chamber whether he had anything to say, he answered that he did. What followed is not carried in the contemporaneous accounts. (Chapter 5)
Ronnie Lee Gardner, asked for his last words, June 18, 2010: “I do not, no.” (Chapter 5)
Donna Nu, on Michael Burdell, the man Ronnie Lee Gardner murdered: “Michael didn’t believe in capital punishment.” She added that he would not have wanted to be the reason Gardner was executed. (Chapter 5)
Brad Sigmon, final statement read by his attorney, March 7, 2025: He asked that his closing words be a call of love to his fellow Christians to “help us end the death penalty.” He said an eye for an eye had been used to persuade his jury and that he had been “too ignorant to know how wrong that was.” He quoted Matthew 5:38-39. He closed: “We are now under God’s grace and mercy.” (Chapter 5)
Mikal Mahdi, April 11, 2025: He made no final statement. He did not turn his head toward the nine witnesses. In his final days he asked to donate his organs and tissue. His attorney: “Facing death, Mikal advocated for life.” (Chapter 5)
Stephen Corey Bryant, November 14, 2025: He declined to make a final statement. He glanced at the witnesses. Then the hood. (Chapter 5)
Gerald “Bo” King, attorney for Brad Sigmon and Stephen Bryant, after Bryant’s execution: Bryant was the seventh man South Carolina had executed in fourteen months, and each had been forced into a choice among “bloody, burning, or protracted deaths.” (Chapters 5, 9)
Doug Fabrizio, media witness to Ronnie Lee Gardner’s execution, speaking fourteen years later: He said he still felt conflicted, that he believed journalists should be present at these events, and that he kept asking himself whether he was accomplishing anything beyond looking. (Chapters 5, 12)
The following statements are collected here for ease of reference. Most are quoted and sourced in the body of this book at the chapters indicated; where a statement appears only here, its source is given with the quotation.
Representative Bruce Skaug (R-Nampa), chief sponsor of House Bill 37: “We needed something that was sure and humane, and firing squad is humane because it is sudden, it is quick and it is certain.” And, to a House committee in February 2025: “At first when you hear firing squad, if you’re not familiar with the history, you think ‘well that sounds barbaric’ is what I’ve heard from some. It is certain. It is quick. And it brings justice for the victims and their families in a more expeditious manner than other types.” (Chapter 3)
Senator Dan Foreman (R-Viola), a veteran and retired police officer, opposing House Bill 37: “The claims that it’s instantaneous. Well, yes, sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. And if you’ve ever seen that, I think you would change your mind on how you’re about to vote.” (Chapter 3)
Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow (D-Boise): “It’s barbaric, and it unfortunately puts the optics of Idaho in a place that I don’t think we care to be.” (Chapters 3, 12)
Governor Brad Little, on signing House Bill 37: “I have long made clear my support of capital punishment. My signing of this bill is consistent with my support of the Idaho Legislature’s actions in setting the policies around methods of execution in the state of Idaho.” (Chapter 3)
IDOC Director Josh Tewalt, following Thomas Creech’s failed execution: “While the execution of Thomas Eugene Creech did not proceed, the process worked as intended. … Some are characterizing today’s events as a failure, but the opposite is true. The process worked to prevent a failure, and I think that’s an important distinction.” (Chapter 2)
Federal Defender Services of Idaho, on Creech’s second death warrant: “Mr. Creech has spent more than 50 years in prison and is now suffering from significant mental health issues because of the trauma he was subjected to when the state failed to execute him.” (Chapter 2)
Robin Maher, Executive Director, Death Penalty Information Center: “Every new execution method in history has been introduced with the promise that it will be foolproof and ‘more humane’ than the previous method. Unfortunately, those promises have always been broken.” On Idaho specifically: the state has “invested more than a million taxpayer dollars to implement a firing squad — a method of execution that has already proven to be as flawed as any other.” And on the cost of capital prosecution: “As soon as the prosecutor decides to seek death, the price tag goes up.” (Chapters 3, 15, 12)
David Weiss, attorney for Mikal Mahdi: “It’s not fully clear what happened. Did one of the gunmen not fire that one? Did their gun get jammed? Did they miss? We just have no idea at this point.” (Chapter 6)
ACLU of Idaho: “To be clear, we at the ACLU of Idaho oppose all executions; there is no method that does not impose an intolerably high risk of cruel and unusual punishment.” (Chapter 3)
Meredith Barnett, daughter of Captain James Myers: “It’s difficult to talk about taking someone else’s life, but I do feel like that’s justice.” (Chapter 10)
IDOC Director Bree Derrick, on House Bill 803: The bill was about “not wanting folks — you know, the public or others — to weigh in on rulemaking related to execution procedures, specifically.” (Chapter 13)
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting in *Arthur v. Dunn* (2017), joined by Justice Breyer: “In addition to being near instant, death by shooting may also be comparatively painless.” And: “What cruel irony that the method that appears most humane may turn out to be our most cruel experiment yet.” (Chapter 17)
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissenting from the denial of a stay in *Boyd v. Hamm* (2025), joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson: “Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to four minutes. The Constitution would grant him that grace. My colleagues do not.” (Chapters 12, 16)
Judge Emily C. Marks, enjoining Alabama’s nitrogen protocol in Jeffery Lee’s case (2026): “Were Alabama to adopt firing squad as a method of execution, that method would likely be challenged as well. Indeed, there is likely no method — no matter how humane — that would be immune to constitutional challenge. But the Constitution does not guarantee a painless death, and human life cannot be purposefully extinguished without some risk of pain. The Court, the condemned, and the State must all confront that sobering reality.” (Chapter 14)
U.S. Department of Justice, *Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty* (2026): Lethal injection “has faced repeated and continuing legal challenges,” and “anti-death penalty activists have waged a public campaign against providers of lethal injection drugs.” The Bureau of Prisons “should follow suit” and modify its execution protocol “to include additional, constitutional manners of execution.” (Chapter 14)
Anthony Boyd, in a recorded message to Governor Kay Ivey the day before his execution: “Before an innocent man is executed, come sit down with me and have a conversation with the guy you deemed one of the worst of the worst.” (Chapter 12)