A Utah man who killed his girlfriend’s mother by cutting her throat was put to death by lethal injection early on Thursday in the state’s first execution since 2010.
Taberon Honie, 48, was convicted of aggravated murder over the July 1998 death of Claudia Benn.
Honie was 22 when he broke into Ms Benn’s house in Cedar City after a day of heavy drinking and drug use, and repeatedly slashed her throat and stabbed her in other parts of her body.
Ms Benn’s grandchildren, including Honie’s then two-year-old daughter, were in the house at the time.
The judge who sentenced him to death found that Honie had sexually abused one of the children, one of the aggravating factors used to reach that decision.
Honie’s last meal before his execution was a cheeseburger, french fries and a milkshake, Utah Department of Corrections said. Honie spent the evening with his family before the execution.
After decades of failed appeals, Honie’s execution warrant was signed in June despite defence objections to the planned lethal drug combination.
In July, the state changed its execution protocol to using only a high dose of pentobarbital – the nervous system suppressant used to euthanise pets.
The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole denied Honie’s petition to commute his sentence to life in prison after a two-day hearing in July during which his lawyers said he grew up on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona with parents who abused alcohol and neglected him.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, also denied a final request by Honie to delay the execution.
Honie told the Parole Board he would not have killed Ms Benn if he had been in his “right mind”, and asked the board to allow him “to exist” so he could be a support for his daughter.
Tressa Honie told the board she has a complicated relationship with her mother and said she would lose her most supportive parental figure if her father were to be executed.
However, other family members argued that Honie deserved no mercy.
They described Ms Benn as a pillar of their family and the south-western Utah community — a Paiute tribal member, substance abuse counsellor and carer for her children and grandchildren.
Ms Benn’s niece, Sarah China Azule, said she was happy with the board’s decision to move forward with Honie’s execution.
“He deserves an eye for an eye,” she said.
Honie was one of six people facing execution in Utah.
The death sentence for a seventh person, Douglas Lovell, who killed a woman to prevent her testifying against him in a rape case, was recently overturned by the Utah Supreme Court. He will be re-sentenced.
A man described by his lawyers as intellectually disabled was executed a few hours earlier in Texas for strangling and trying to rape a woman who went jogging near her Houston home more than 27 years ago.
Arthur Lee Burton had been sentenced to death for the July 1997 killing of Nancy Adleman, a 48-year-old mother of three who police found beaten and strangled with her own shoelace in a wooded area off a jogging trail along a bayou.
