Salt Lake City — A Utah man who killed his girlfriend’s mother by slitting her throat was executed by lethal injection early Thursday in the state’s first execution since 2010.
Taberon Dave Honie, 48, was convicted of aggravated murder in the death of Claudia Benn in July 1998.
Honie was 22 when he broke into Benn’s Cedar City home after a day of heavy drinking and drug use and repeatedly slit 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 home 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 in making that decision.
Honie’s last meal before his execution was a cheeseburger, fries and a milkshake, the Utah Department of Corrections said. Honie spent the evening with his family before the execution.
After decades of unsuccessful appeals, Honie’s execution warrant was signed in June, despite defense objections to the planned lethal drug combination. 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 Paroles denied Honie’s request to commute his sentence to life in prison after a two-day hearing in July in which Honie’s attorneys said he grew up on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona with parents who abused alcohol and neglected him.
Rick Bowmer/AP
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, also rejected a final request from Honie to delay the execution.
Honie told the parole board he would not have killed Benn if he had been “sane”. He asked the board to allow him to “exist” so he could be a support to his daughter.
Tressa Honie told the council she has a complicated relationship with her mother and would lose her most supportive parental figure if her father were executed.
However, other family members argued that Taberon Honie deserved no pity.
They described Benn as a pillar of their family and the southwestern Utah community — a member of the Paiute tribe, a drug counselor and a caregiver to his children and grandchildren.
Sarah China Azule, Benn’s niece, said she was pleased with the council’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 of a seventh defendant, Douglas Lovell, who killed a woman to prevent her from testifying against him in a rape case, was recently overturned by the Utah Supreme Court. He will be tried again.
A man described by his lawyers as intellectually disabled has been executed a few hours earlier in Texas Arthur Lee Burton was sentenced to death for strangling and attempting to rape a woman who was jogging near his Houston home more than 27 years ago. Arthur Lee Burton was sentenced to death for the July 1997 murder of Nancy Adleman, a 48-year-old mother of three who police found beaten and strangled with her own shoelace in a wooded area near a jogging trail along a bayou.
