SALT LAKE CITY — On Thursday, one minute after midnight, the state of Utah plans to carry out its first execution by lethal injection in more than two decades.

Looking back at the state’s history dealing with the death penalty, repeal has been attempted several times. Most recently, in 2022. But it’s never had enough legislative support.

Former Republican lawmaker Lowry Snow had a large hand in the 2022 attempt. He made a plea to members of the Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice Committee.

“I think there’s a better way to do criminal justice,” he said. “We’re not moving rapidly. We’re not bringing about justice quickly. That’s why I say the system is broken.”

The repeal hearing lasted hours, and families of victims gave tearful testimonies.

“These families who had been promised (a specific outcome) were essentially given, I think, a false promise,” Snow said.

His main argument: a death sentence yields a lengthy court process that leads to decades of appeals and is rarely carried out. However, other views were shared in that hearing which pushed back.

“It’s proportional justice. If you take a life, then you run the risk of losing your own as a result of it,” said Rep. Jeff Burton R-Nephi.

It was his single vote that caused that repeal to fail, after he had a last-minute change of mind.

“I don’t think we should repeal something when we haven’t done everything we can possibly do to improve it,” Burton said.

The improvements he spoke of, he said, included mainly cutting down on the state’s portion of the appeals process. He also argued the death penalty helps prosecutors with leverage.

“To be very forthright with you, I don’t think a lot has been done on this since ’22,” he said. “That ability to offer to remove the death penalty has caused that individual to give the family some relief as to where the remains are.”

Other attempts at repeal were made in 2016 and 2018. While the discussion never moved further than a floor debate, there have been some changes to capital punishment in Utah over the years.

“The big turning point for Utah came in 1992, and that’s when the legislature created a new sentencing option for capital cases,” said Dave Cawley, Cold Podcast host.

Cawley said the new sentencing option brought another option for finality for both victims and prosecutors.

“Life without a chance of parole,” he said

Utah’s current death penalty laws also ban execution for people with intellectual disabilities. In 2007, the murder of a child under the age of 14 became a death-eligible offense.

More recently, Utah also reinstated the firing squad as a backup method of execution if lethal injection was unavailable or was ruled unconstitutional. And as the first execution in 14 years inches closer, Utahns and their elected representatives may not be finished with the debate.

“It becomes an inflection point for all of us to collectively ask,” Cawley said. “‘Is this the way we want our justice system to work?’”

Patrick Corbin, coming off his worst start of the season, is set to take the mound for the Washington Nationals against the San Francisco Giants on Monday.

The 35-year-old left-hander gave up 13 hits and 10 earned runs in 3.0 innings versus the Arizona Diamondbacks on July 30, tanking his stats in the process. He had previously posted back-to-back quality starts coming out of the All-Star break, only to wipe out that progress shortly after.

Now, Corbin enters Monday’s contest 2-11 on the season with a 5.88 ERA, 1.529 WHIP, 6.6 strikeouts per nine innings and a -1.1 WAR. His ERA, which hasn’t dipped below 5.26 at all this year, ranks dead last among qualified MLB pitchers.

Corbin also boasts an Adjusted Earned Run Average of 67, which unfortunately is not uncharted territory for the veteran southpaw. His ERA+ in 2021 was 70 and his ERA+ in 2022 was 62, with 100 representing league average.

According to Underdog Fantasy’s Justin Havens, Corbin is currently one of three pitchers in the modern era to record multiple seasons with an ERA+ of 70 or lower and at least 120.0 innings pitched. Jim Deshaies and Vic Frazier are the other two, each doing so twice.

Should Corbin finish 2024 under that 70 ERA+ threshold, he would become the first pitcher in MLB history to post three such campaigns.

Corbin was a two-time All-Star with the Arizona Diamondbacks between 2012 and 2018, and he even earned NL Cy Young votes in his first year with the Nationals in 2019. When he won the World Series in Washington that fall, Corbin was 70-61 with a 3.80 ERA, 1.267 WHIP and 16.9 WAR for his career.

Since the start of 2020, however, Corbin is 29-68 with a 5.67 ERA, 1.543 WHIP and -2.5 WAR. He has led the NL in losses three times, earned runs allowed three times, hits allowed twice and home runs allowed once, with his 127 starts ranking fourth in all of MLB in that span.

Corbin has a chance to improve his ERA+ against the Giants on Monday, but recent history suggests he won’t.

Of the 13 batters on the Giants’ active roster, eight have faced Corbin before. All eight of those players own a batting average of at least .333 against Corbin, with six of them boasting a career OPS over 1.100 in the head-to-head matchup.

First pitch from Nationals Park is scheduled for 6:45 p.m. ET.

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Firefighters battling the Pleasant Valley fire near Guernsey, Wyoming, have barricaded the massive wildfire in the steep terrain of the Haystack Range that is blamed for burning the homestead of U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, the state’s lone congresswoman, and briefly threatened historic Fort Laramie.

Meanwhile, two separate wildfires in the northeastern part of Wyoming have grown to about 24,000 acres combined, stretching resources in that part of the state as the Pleasant Valley fire is slowly getting tamped down in the Cowboy State’s southeastern corner.

“We are making progress on both of them, and we’ll be helped with cooler weather coming in,” said Stuart Burnham, fire marshal for the Campbell County Fire Department, of the new fires in the northeastern part of the state. “The temperatures have been in the upper 90s, but we’re hoping for 10-20 degrees of cooler temperatures that will help us.”

A third fire, called the Clearwater Fire, has been burning in the steep Shoshone National Forest about 11 miles west of Wapiti, Wyoming.

That fire is 7% contained and has burned 1,786 acres, said Ranae Pape, a spokeswoman for fire agencies fighting that fire, which began July 19 from a lightning strike.

The fire indefinitely closed several campgrounds in the Elk Fork vicinity and has 100 firefighting personnel on the line, Pape said.

The Clearwater Fire briefly shut down the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

Most of the state’s attention, however, has been in the Guernsey area 350 miles to the southeast of Yellowstone’s East Entrance in Park County.

As of Monday, the Pleasant Valley Fire had burned nearly 29,000 acres and is reportedly 65% contained, said Tyson Finnicum, a spokesman for the Wyoming Type 3 Team working the incident.

Finnicum’s Type 3 team is an emergency classification level used by fire tracking agency National Interagency Fire Center and is made up of a small group of local, state and federal officials needed to help in the management of combating a wildfire.

It’s the same kind of team that Pape is working with in the Clearwater Fire in the Shoshone National Forest.

Famous Structure Casualty

The Hageman homestead, a rustic cabin-like structure with plastered walls and built into the side of a hill near McGinnis Pass, was destroyed by an uncontained fire in rough terrain littered with huge granite boulders and tinder fueled with juniper pinions and sagebrush.

“It’s been pretty devastating,” Hageman told Cowboy State Daily last week.

The homestead likely burned sometime Wednesday afternoon after the Haystack Fire and Pleasant Valley fires combined to form one big inferno now known as the Pleasant Valley Fire.

The historic town of Fort Laramie was briefly threatened Wednesday, but firefighters and ranchers dug their heels in to stop the fire’s advance at a canal located about 2 miles from the western edge of town.

Since Wednesday, the fire has pulled back from U.S. Highway 26 and headed deep into the Haystack Range.

The burn area in the Haystack Range is between McGinnis and McCann passes in Goshen County at about 5,000 feet in elevation. The range passes are located east of Whalen Canyon Road and are located about 6 miles apart.

The southern end of the fire is about 8 miles to the northeast of Guernsey, the area where the Pleasant Valley fire first started.

Evacuations were twice briefly called for the communities of Hartsville and Sunrise north of Guernsey and for people who live along the Waylen Canyon and Pleasant Valley roads.

Prairie Fires

The latest threat in the state has emerged from two roaring grass fires on open prairies in Campbell and Weston counties.

Those fires have consumed a total of 23,000 acres in the northeast corner of Wyoming, Burnham said.

In one, the Wildcat Creek Fire is burning southeast of Wright off Rochelle Hills Road.

“It’s burning in the Rochelle Hills area, where there are some rolling hills, ravines and ridges,” said Burnham of the fire that began Aug. 2.

Wright is a tiny energy community about 40 miles south of Gillette, the central city in Campbell County’s energy-rich Powder River Basin.

The cause of the Wildcat Creek Fire is still under investigation, Burnham said.

The fire rapidly grew due to strong winds and dry vegetation.

On Sunday evening, the fire was estimated to be about 17,258 acres. The fire has burned into Weston County to the east of its origin, Burnham said.

There are no reports of injuries or structures lost.

Burnham said that the fire is about 30% contained.

The Deer Creek Fire located about 25 miles west of Gillette has multiple agencies involved in fighting the 7,000-acre fire, which is not contained.

The cause of this fire is still under investigation, Burnham said.

The grass fire erupted Aug. 3 west of West Echeta Road.

The fire quickly spread due to the dry weather, winds and hot temperatures.

The Bureau of Land Management has assumed command of this incident, with fire departments in Campbell, Johnson and Sheridan counties, as well as the Wyoming State Forestry Division and U.S. Forest Service helping fight the wildfire.

Burnham said that the region is experiencing a lack of moisture and hot weather, which has fueled the quick spread of the wildfires.

Multiple heavy air tankers, helicopters and bulldozers have been used to try and contain the fire. It is anticipated fire crews will be on scene for multiple days, Burnham said.

Meanwhile, Near Pinedale

Another wildfire burning on the Bridger Teton National Forest is the Leeds Creek fire, a blaze that’s burned about 1,230 acres and is 13% contained, the U.S. Forest Service reprts through its InciniWeb wildlife fire tracker tool.

The fire was firest reported the morning of Aug. 1 and its cause is unknown. It’s burning a mix of conifer and heavy dead and down fuels about 18 miles southwewt of Dubois, according to the report. So far, a crew of 95 is working the fire, along with building a dozer line to “lock up the fire’s edge and gain containment.”

Contact Pat Maio at pat@cowboystatedaily.com

Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.