{"id":417789,"date":"2026-01-16T22:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/417789\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T22:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T22:19:11","slug":"today-in-history-january-17-lets-do-it-death-row-inmate-fought-any-attempt-to-save-his-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/417789\/","title":{"rendered":"Today in History – January 17: ‘Let’s do it’: Death row inmate fought any attempt to save his life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just six months earlier, Gary Gilmore had robbed and murdered a petrol station worker, then a hotel manager the next day.<\/p>\n

Though both victims had cooperated with the robberies, he killed them anyway.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad. (Nine Archives)<\/p>\n

When he tried to throw away the gun used in both murders, it went off and shot him in the hand.<\/p>\n

Gilmore was found soon afterwards.<\/p>\n

The October trial took two days and the jury only needed a few hours to deliberate.<\/p>\n

Gilmore was unusual in that he actively opposed efforts to spare his life.<\/p>\n

Gilmore said he wanted anti-death penalty activists to “butt out”.<\/p>\n

When his mother tried to sue for a stay of execution, he fought to stop her lawsuit.<\/p>\n

“This is my life and this is my death. It’s been sanctioned by the courts that I die and I accept that,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Gary Gilmore was the first person executed after the death penalty was reinstated. (Nine Archives)<\/p>\n

His last words were: “Let’s do it.”<\/p>\n

Under Utah law, one person in the five-member firing squad would unknowingly be firing a blank.<\/p>\n

This way, no-one would know for sure if they had killed the prisoner.<\/p>\n

But when his brother looked at his body, he found there were five bullet holes in his shirt.<\/p>\n

In a particularly macabre sketch, the comedy show Saturday Night Live sang a song called “Let’s Kill Gary Gilmore for Christmas” several days before his death.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Cast on Saturday Night Live performed a song called “Let’s Kill Gary Gilmore for Christmas” several days before his death. (NBC)<\/p>\n

Five years earlier, the United States Supreme Court had placed a moratorium on the death penalty.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court made the decision after an “emotionally disturbed and mentally impaired” man was sentenced to death after a one-day trial in 1968.<\/p>\n

As a result of the moratorium, more than 600 prisoners on death row had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.<\/p>\n

Among those spared were Robert F Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, and the murderers in the Manson family.<\/p>\n

The death penalty was reinstated after US states amended their laws to be more specific.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Charles Manson followers Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten had their death sentences commuted in 1972. (AP\/AAP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just six months earlier, Gary Gilmore had robbed and murdered a petrol station worker, then a hotel manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-417789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}