Utah man put to death by lethal injection in state’s first execution since 2010

A Utah man who killed his girlfriend’s mother by slashing her throat was put to death by lethal injection early on Thursday in the state’s first execution since 2010.

Taberon Dave Honie, 48, was convicted of aggravated murder in the July 1998 death of Claudia Benn, the maternal grandmother of his now 27-year-old daughter, Tressa.

Honie was pronounced dead at 12:25am local time in an execution that went as planned and took about 17 minutes. He tapped his foot and mouthed “I love you” to family members watching from a witness chamber after he was given the lethal injection of two doses of pentobarbital.

Honie was 22 when he broke into Benn’s house in Cedar City, the tribal headquarters of the Paiute Indian tribe of Utah, after a day of heavy drinking and drug use. He repeatedly slashed Benn’s throat and stabbed other parts of her body. The judge who sentenced him to death also found that Honie had sexually abused one of Benn’s other grandchildren who was in the house with a then two-year-old Tressa at the time of the murder.

Honie, who had grown up on the Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona, spent the evening with his daughter and other immediate family before the execution. He told Tressa earlier this week that he had come to terms with his fate and hoped she could too, she told the Associated Press.

After the medical team removed Honie’s body from the chamber, his family was allowed in to perform a Native American grieving ritual with bird feathers and cornmeal that they told officers would help free his soul after death.

Outside the prison, a group of anti-death penalty protesters sang Amazing Grace and held signs that said, “All life is precious.”

After decades of failed appeals, Honie’s execution warrant was signed in June despite defense objections to the planned lethal drug. In July, the state changed its execution protocol to using only a high dose of pentobarbital – the nervous system suppressant used to euthanize pets.

The Utah board of pardons and parole denied Honie’s petition to commute his sentence to life in prison after a July hearing during which Honie’s attorneys described his troubled childhood growing up on the reservation with parents who abused alcohol. He had started using hard drugs as a teenager and told the parole board he would not have killed Benn if he had been in his “right mind”. He asked the board to allow him “to exist” so he could be a support for his daughter.

Tressa Honie told the board she had a complicated relationship with her mother and would lose her most supportive parent if her father were to be executed. She said in an interview on Tuesday that she was not ready to lose her dad and felt abandoned by family on her mother’s side who had fought for his execution.

Benn’s close family argued that Taberon Honie deserved no mercy, and they said his execution was the justice they needed after decades of grief.

“He deserves an eye for an eye,” said Benn’s niece, Sarah China Azule.

She and her cousins described Benn as a pillar in their family and south-western Utah community. She was a Paiute tribal council member, substance abuse counselor and caregiver for her children and grandchildren.

Hours before Honie’s execution, a man described by his lawyers as intellectually disabled was executed in Texas for strangling and trying to rape a woman who went jogging near her Houston home more than 27 years ago.