On this
date, June 18, 2010, Ronnie Lee Gardner was the third Death Row Inmate to die
from the firing squad in Utah. He was also the seventh person to be executed in the
State of Utah since 1976. Let us hear from the victims’ families whom justice
was served.
CASE: In February of 1980, Ronnie Lee
Gardner was sent to prison for the first time, on a robbery conviction. On
April 19, 1981, Gardner escaped from prison with another inmate. Two weeks
later, Gardner finds and confronts a man who was sleeping with Gardner's
girlfriend. Gardner is wounded by gunfire and is eventually arrested and
returned to prison. Serving sentences in the Utah State Prison for convictions
of robbery, burglary and escape, Gardner is already a career criminal. On
August 6, 1984, he was taken to the University of Utah Medical Center for a
check-up where he overpowered a guard, stole his pistol and escaped again. On
October 9, 1984, Melvyn John Otterstrom was shot and killed by Gardner as he
tended bar at the Cheers Tavern in Salt Lake City. Mel Otterstrom was a husband
and father who worked at the Utah Paper Box Company as a controller and
moonlighted as a bartender part-time in the evenings. The medical examiner
testified in a pre-trial hearing that Otterstrom was probably lying on his back
on the floor when he was shot in the face. The bullet went through his skull.
Darcy Perry McCoy testified under a grant of immunity in the Otterstrom case
that she helped Gardner plan a robbery and waited for him in a car outside
Cheers the night of the killing. Gardner was captured in November 1984. On
April 2, 1985, Ronnie Lee Gardner was under a $1.5 million bail and was
transported from the Utah State Prison to the Metropolitan Hall of Justice in
Salt Lake City for a pretrial hearing on a second degree murder charge for
killing Melvyn Otterstrom. As Gardner and his guards entered the courthouse
basement, Darcy Perry McCoy's sister, Carma Jolley Hainsworth, walked up and
handed Gardner a gun. It was later discovered that she had also hidden a bag
containing men's clothing, duct tape and a knife in a tote bag under a sink in
the women's bathroom in the basement of the courthouse. The guards exchanged
gunfire with Gardner, shot him through the lung, and then retreated from the
area. In attempting to escape, Gardner entered the archives room, where he saw
two attorneys, Robert Macri and Michael Burdell, hiding behind the door.
Gardner pointed the gun at Macri and cocked the hammer of the gun. Burdell
exclaimed, "Oh, my God!" Turning, Gardner shot Burdell, who died in
surgery 45 minutes after the shooting. Gardner then forced prison officer
Richard Thomas, who was also in the basement, to conduct him out of the
archives room to a stairwell leading to the second floor. As Gardner crossed
the lobby, he shot and seriously wounded Nicholas G. Kirk, then 58, a uniformed
bailiff who was unarmed and had just stepped off an elevator. Gardner climbed
the stairs to the next floor, where he took hostage Wilburn Miller, a vending
machine serviceman. As Gardner exited the building, Miller broke free and
escaped. Outside, Gardner was surrounded by half a dozen waiting policemen with
drawn weapons. Ordered to drop his weapon, he threw down his gun and lay down,
surrendering to the officers. Gardner's attorneys, brothers Andrew and James
Valdez of Salt Lake Legal Defenders Association, were to meet Gardner that day
at 9:00 a.m. for the pretrial hearing. Andrew Valdez was walking toward the
courthouse when he saw Gardner go down to the ground. As Andrew ran across the
street, he could see that Gardner was bleeding from the chest. Andrew spoke
with Gardner and then left. James Valdez arrived at the courthouse soon after.
He immediately approached Gardner and asked him if he was all right; Gardner
responded that he was in pain. Gardner was later transported to the University
Hospital. Wayne Jorgensen, a prison officer assigned to guard Gardner at the
hospital, testified at trial that Gardner told him he shot Burdell because he
thought Burdell looked as if he would jump on him. According to Jorgensen,
Gardner also declared that he would have killed anyone who tried to stop him
from escaping. Both Andrew and James Valdez represented Gardner at trial. The
thrust of the defense was that Gardner was in such pain and physical distress
after he was wounded that his shooting Burdell was only a reaction and
therefore the killing was unintentional. In preparation for trial, defense
counsel spoke with the emergency room doctors who treated Gardner. The doctors
told counsel that Gardner was not in shock when he came into the emergency
room, did not have excessive bleeding, was lucid and demanding, and was aware
of the situation. Robert Macri testified at trial that after Gardner shot
Burdell, Macri ran around the door and closed it behind him as a shield.
However, at the preliminary hearing, Macri testified that he could not remember
how the door shut. After the preliminary hearing but before trial, unknown to
either the prosecution or defense counsel, Macri underwent hypnosis to help him
remember how the door shut. Macri could not recall that detail while under
hypnosis but asserted that while driving to California some months later, he
suddenly recalled that he had shut the door. In all other respects, Macri's
testimony at the preliminary hearing and at trial were the same. It was at the
post-conviction proceeding while Gardner's appeal was pending that defense
counsel first became aware that Macri had been hypnotized prior to trial. At
trial, Gardner took the stand and testified on direct examination that he had
been convicted of various crimes, including crimes of violence. Defense counsel
elicited this information, according to the testimony at the habeas hearing,
because he believed that the prosecution would use those convictions to impeach
Gardner and he wanted to "steal the prosecution's thunder." Carma
Jolley Hainsworth pleaded guilty to aiding in an escape and was sentenced to
one to 15 years in prison. In September 1994, Gardner attacked and stabbed
another inmate with a homemade knife several times.
 |
|
Tami Stewart
|
QUOTE 1: George "Nick"
Kirk, was a bailiff at the courthouse the day of Gardner's botched escape. Shot
and wounded in the lower abdomen, Kirk suffered chronic health problems the
rest of his life. Kirk's daughter, Tami Stewart, said before the execution she
believed Gardner's death would bring her family some closure. "I think at that moment, he will feel that fear that his
victims felt," she said.
QUOTE 2: Barb Webb, daughter of
Gardner victim Nick Kirk, sobbed when news of the execution came. "I'm so relieved it's all over," she said,
hugging her daughter, Mandi Hull. "I just hope my
sister, who just passed away, and my father, and all of the other victims are
waiting for his sorry ass. I hope they get to go down after him."
 |
|
Tami Stewart
|
QUOTE 3: "Everybody said it would be gruesome and it would
affect me," said Jamie Stewart, the 27-year-old
granddaughter of Salt Lake County sheriff's bailiff Nick Kirk. "But it wasn't bad whatsoever. You didn't see hardly any
blood. He was dressed all in black. I just feel like justice has finally been
served. He deserved it."
AUTHOR: Loved
one of George “Nick” Kirk - George “Nick” Kirk was shot and wounded by Ronnie
Lee Gardner on April 2, 1985. Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by the firing
squad in Utah on June 18, 2010.
 |
|
Melvyn
John Otterstrom
|
QUOTE 4: "The
18th will be a day of closure."
QUOTE 5: After the hearing,
Otterstrom's cousin, Craig Watson, said he wants the execution to go through as
scheduled. "It's about time justice is
served," he said. (June 3, 2010)
QUOTE 6: A police officer with 35 years on the job, Watson said Gardner accepted
the punishment "like a man." Gardner, he noted, seemed calm before
the hood was slipped on.
"There
was no crying, no wimpering," Watson said
Friday. "When it was over with, I just had this
feeling that he's gone and we can move on."
 |
|
Craig
Watson
|
QUOTE 7: Thursday November 15,
2012 - Craig Watson said he didn’t know if “closure” was the proper word.
But as he witnessed the 2010 execution of
Ronnie Lee Gardner, who killed Watson’s cousin Melvyn J. Otterstrom at a bar in
1984, a feeling of peace came over him: It was, finally, over.
As Utah lawmakers weigh the cost of executing
men like Gardner versus keeping them in prison for life, Watson asked them on
Wednesday to remember there are some things that no amount of money can touch —
a message also shared by Barbara Noriega, whose mother and sister were killed
by another man now on Utah’s death row.
“With the death sentence, there are
no recurring offenders and we can go on with our lives,” Watson said, his
voice breaking at times as he addressed the Law Enforcement and Criminal
Justice Interim Committee.
QUOTE 8: Watson agreed the
legal process is too lengthy and often painful, an argument for streamlining
rather than doing away with the death penalty.
For more than two decades, as they waited for
justice to be carried out, Watson said he and other relatives had every
“stupid” move Gardner shoved in their faces — among them, feigned illnesses and
escape attempts, including one at a courthouse in 1985 where Gardner fatally
shot attorney Michael Burdell and wounded bailiff Nick Kirk.
“We got to hear about it, we got to
see it, we got to relive it,” said Watson, a 37-year veteran law enforcement officer.
Since Gardner’s execution, Otterstrom’s widow
and son have finally been able to move on with their lives, he said.
“In my opinion, there isn’t enough
money to make a difference,” Watson said.
AUTHOR: Craig Watson is the cousin
of Melvyn John Otterstrom, who was shot dead by Ronnie Lee Gardner on October 9,
1984.
No comments:
Post a Comment