Ronnie Lee Gardiner was brought up a Mormon and as such fasted before his death. He slept soundly up til an hour before he was shot. 24 year ago he had shot a lawyer in a futile escape bid, he was first pulled age 2, crawling down the street in his nappy, at 6 he was sniffing petrol and glue, at 10 using heroin, by 11 he was in a Utah mental hospital, in his teens he was sexually abused and raped both by his uncle and in foster care, by 16 a father, by 23 a murderer. For 25 years he was put in solitary confinement. He was allowed to touch the hand of his daughter in the week before he was shot. Utah has dropped the firing squad option now though Ronnie elected to die by this method in 2004, not in defiance as Gary Gilmore had in 1977 as he shouted, 'le's do it' to the riflemen behind the curtain. Gardiner opted to be shot due to the frequent failures of lethal injection. Amethod designed to make murder appear like a clinical opperation. The needle is fixed in to the vein that carries first Pavulon, a muscle relaxent so anyone watching is preserved any discomfort, Potassium Chloride, to stop the heart and Sodium Thiopental, a lethal poison, none of the painkiller overdoses of Shipman. Ronnie Lee Gardiner was able to twitch, rile a little and raise his arm as far as the strap would let him. A terribly sad life and death. But America is backwards in many ways. As the rest of the world moves on they slowly catch up, like a big, lumbering oaf we are too scared to disagree with.
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