SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah man who killed his girlfriend’s mother by slitting her throat was executed by lethal injection early Thursday morning, the first execution in the state since 2010.
Taberon Dave Honie, 48, was convicted of the aggravated murder of Claudia Benn, the maternal grandmother of his now 27-year-old daughter Tressa, in July 1998.
Honie was pronounced dead at 12:25 a.m. Mountain Time. The execution went as planned and lasted about 17 minutes. After being given two doses of pentobarbital as a lethal injection, he tapped his foot and mouthed “I love you” to his family members who were watching in the witness room.
Strapped to the execution table in a sterile white room at the state prison, Honie turned his head to thank correctional officers for caring for his family before losing consciousness, prison warden Bart Mortensen told reporters after the execution.
Honie let out a sigh as the medication flowed through the IVs in both arms, and his upper body bounced off the table. He lay still for several minutes before dying, turning pale blue as his glasses slipped back on his forehead.
His last words were, “From the beginning, if it has to be done to make them heal, let’s do it. If they tell you you can’t change, don’t listen to them. To all my brothers and sisters here, keep changing. I love you all. Take care of yourselves.”
Honie was 22 when he broke into Benn’s home in Cedar City, the tribal headquarters of the Paiute Indian tribe in Utah, after a day of heavy drinking and drug use. He repeatedly slit 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 then-2-year-old Tressa at the time of the murder.
Honie, who grew up on the Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona, spent the evening before the execution with his daughter and other close family members. 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. His last meal consisted of a cheeseburger, French fries and a milkshake, the Utah Department of Corrections said.
After the medical team removed Honie’s body from the chamber, his family was allowed in to perform a Native American mourning ritual using bird feathers and cornmeal, which officials said would help release Honie’s soul after death.
Outside the prison, a group of death penalty protesters sang “Amazing Grace” and held signs reading “Every life is precious.”
After decades of unsuccessful 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 use only a high dose of pentobarbital – the nervous system suppressant used to euthanize pets.
The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole rejected Honie’s request to commute his sentence to life in prison after a July hearing in which Honie’s lawyers described his difficult childhood on the reservation with alcoholic parents. He began using hard drugs as a teenager and told the parole board he would not have killed Benn if he had been “of sound mind.” He asked the board to allow him to “exist” so he could be a support to his daughter.
Tressa Honie told the panel that she has a complicated relationship with her mother and would lose her most supportive parent if her father was executed. In an interview Tuesday, she said she was not ready to lose her father and felt abandoned by her maternal family, who had fought for his execution.
Benn’s close relatives felt that Taberon Honie deserved no mercy and that his execution was the justice they needed after decades of mourning.
“He deserves an eye for an eye,” said Benn’s niece, Sarah China Azule.
She and her cousins described Benn as a pillar of their family and their community in southwestern Utah. She was a member of the Paiute tribal council, a drug counselor and a caregiver to their children and grandchildren.
Tressa, who has few memories of her grandmother, said she understood why her cousins needed closure in this way, but it left her feeling lonely. She mourned the absence of the strong maternal role model her father stole from her life.
Correctional officials kept Honie’s immediate family separate from Benn’s as they attended the execution. His brutal crime drove a wedge between family members that several said will be difficult to mend.
Honie was one of six people facing execution in Utah. The death sentence of a seventh defendant, Douglas Lovell, who killed a woman to prevent her from testifying against him in a rape trial, was recently overturned by the Utah Supreme Court. He will be retried.
Hours before Honie’s execution, a man described by his lawyers as mentally disabled was executed in Texas for strangling and attempting to rape a woman as she jogged near her Houston home more than 27 years ago.
