Approximately fifteen minutes after midnight on June 18, 2010 four .30 caliber bullets tore through the chest of Ronnie Lee Gardner in the death house at a state prison in Draper, Utah. Associated Press reporter Jennifer Dobner said when the bullets pierced Gardner’s chest, he clenched his fist and tried twice to pull up his arm as if “he were lifting something.” The condemned inmate, who had spent nearly a quarter of a century waiting for the state’s final judgment to be carried out, was pronounced dead at 12:17 a.m.

            Gardner’s execution by firing squad marked the first time in 14 years that such an execution has been carried out in this country—the last being John Albert Taylor who was executed for the rape/murder of an 11-year-old girl. The five executioners—one of whom had a blank round in his rifle—were all police officers who had volunteered to carry out Gardner’s execution.

            The execution was greeted by consternation by anti-death penalty groups from around the world who view firing squads as a throwback relic of old frontier days when they were popularized by the U.S. military. The European Union said in a statement that it profoundly regretted Gardner’s execution. Closer to home the American Civil Liberties Union called the execution an example of “barbaric, arbitrary and bankrupting practices of capital punishment.” And the Rev. Tom Goldsmith of the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City said, “murdering the murderer doesn’t create justice or settle the score.”

            The moment Gardner informed a judge that he preferred the firing squad over lethal injection—a practice limited only to condemned inmates convicted prior to Utah’s change from the firing squad to lethal injection as a state-sanctioned method of execution—his fate was sealed. But the reality is that Gardner probably experienced less pain and discomfort by the four bullets that exploded his heart than he would have with the cocktail of drugs used in lethal injections. Death by lethal injection is comfortable only for those who view it—not necessarily by those who endure it.

            I think condemned inmates should not only have the option of selecting the method of execution but the fact of execution itself. Defendants convicted of capital offenses should have the option of choosing between life sentences without the benefit of parole or the death penalty. This would effectively remove the state from the death penalty decision-making process. The state’s death machine, whether firing squad or lethal injection, would exist only to carry out the condemned inmate choice to be put to death.

            And with the choice to die, capital defendants would waive all rights to appeal which would end the barbaric practice of keeping condemned inmates on death rows for periods of 25 to 35 years before putting them to death. A swift, immediate execution would also save states hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to maintain condemned inmates on death rows and subsidize their lengthy appeal process.

            And death penalty opponents would not have a legitimate beef with any inmate who chose death over life imprisonment. That’s a personal choice that no one has a legitimate right to contest. Of course, most inmates faced with the choice would choose natural life imprisonment, but there would be a significant minority who would prefer death—and with that preference should also come the right to select the method of execution.