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

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Utah man who killed his girlfriend’s mother by cutting her throat was put to death by lethal injection early 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.

Honie was pronounced dead at 12:25 a.m. Mountain Time in an execution that went as planned and took about 17 minutes. He tapped his foot and looked around a few times after he was given the lethal injection of two doses of pentobarbital. He gasped once as the drug flowed through IVs in both arms, and his torso jolted off the table. Honie laid still for several minutes before he died and his glasses slid back on his forehead.

His final words were, “From the start it’s been, if it needs to be done for them to heal, let’s do this. If they tell you you can’t change, don’t listen to them. To all my brothers and sisters in here, continue to change. I love you all. Take care.”

Honie was 22 when he broke into 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. Benn’s grandchildren, including Honie’s then 2-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.

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

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 two-day hearing in July during which Honie’s attorneys said he grew up on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona with parents who abused alcohol and neglected him.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, also denied a final request by Honie to delay the execution.

Honie told the parole board he wouldn’t 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 has a complicated relationship with her mother and would lose her most supportive parental figure if her father were to be executed.

However, other family members argued that Taberon Honie deserved no mercy.

They described Benn as a pillar in their family and southwestern Utah community — a Paiute tribal member, substance abuse counselor and caregiver for her children and grandchildren.

Sarah China Azule, Benn’s niece, said that 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 keep her from testifying against him in a rape case, was recently overturned by the Utah Supreme Court. He will be resentenced.

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.