{"id":38273,"date":"2025-09-13T21:55:49","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T21:55:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=38273"},"modified":"2025-09-13T21:55:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T21:55:49","slug":"death-penalty-methods-in-utah-explained-as-charlie-kirk-murder-suspect-faces-capital-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/?p=38273","title":{"rendered":"Death penalty methods in Utah explained as Charlie Kirk murder suspect faces capital punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The man who is suspected of assassinating political activist Charlie Kirk is expected to face capital punishment in Utah.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA – a conservative<\/a> student organization – was shot in the neck while speaking to a crowd at Utah<\/a> Valley University, in Orem, on Wednesday (September 10).<\/p>\n

The singular shot<\/a>, which resulted in Kirk<\/a> being pronounced dead in a local hospital<\/a>, was fired from a sniper on a nearby rooftop of the college campus at around 12.20pm, while he was answering questions about mass shootings and gun violence.<\/p>\n

Kirk himself was pro-guns<\/a>, speaking at a Turning Point event in Salt Lake City in April 2023, he said: “It\u2019s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment.”<\/p>\n

Law enforcement officials have confirmed that they believe the shooter to be 22-year-old Utah native, Tyler Robinson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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While officials are yet to give a motive as to why the assassin killed Kirk, if Robinson is convicted he could face capital punishment. But how exactly would it work in Utah?<\/p>\n

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Well, the ‘Beehive State’ is one of a few in America that still permits multiple methods of execution, although it is mandatory to carry out death by lethal injection.<\/p>\n

In 2010, Ronnie Lee Gardner became only the third person to be executed by firing squad in the modern era – and until last year, Utah hadn’t executed anyone since.<\/p>\n

On August 8, 2024, Taberon Honie became the first person in Utah to be executed by the state since the death of Gardner. It cost a staggering $288,685 to carry out the execution.<\/p>\n

The majority of the funds was used to purchase pentobarbital, the drug<\/a> used to administer the lethal injection, which cost $200,000.<\/p>\n

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\"Tyler<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Robinson has been arrested in connection to the shooting of Charlie Kirk (Utah Governor’s Office)<\/cite><\/div>\n

Meanwhile, Ralph Menzies was due to be executed by way of firing squad on Friday last week (September 5), but a week before it was due to go ahead, a court halted the order after his defense cited that he was suffering with dementia so severe that he did not understand why he was being executed.<\/p>\n

However, if the shooter of Kirk is sentenced to death, they would not be able to choose to die by way of firing squad as Menzies was – that’s because of legislature brought in back in 2004 that details how those on death row<\/a> after that date must die by lethal injection.<\/p>\n

That is unless the state is not able to apprehend the drug a month prior to execution date, in which case firing squad is a back-up method.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The man who is suspected of assassinating political activist Charlie Kirk is expected to face capital punishment in Utah. The 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA – a … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38273"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38275,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38273\/revisions\/38275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}