A look back on Utah's last attempt to repeal the death penalty, and why it failed

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?’”