State attorneys argued death row inmate Taberon Honie doesn't deserve a commutation hearing to ask the state parole board to spare his life — but the board disagreed Friday.
Taberon Honie enters a Fifth District courtroom in Cedar City, Monday, June 10, 2024. A judge signed an execution warrant for Honie, scheduling an execution for Aug. 8, 2024. Honie was sentenced in 1999 for the murder of the mother of his ex-girlfriend.
“The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole remains committed to fostering a process rooted in procedural justice, and accountability, while ensuring that every decision reflects these core principles,” Yim said.asking its members to spare his life. It’s one of the last steps that Honie, 48, and from the Hopi-Tewa tribal community, can take to try to stop his execution.
In July 1998, Honie called his ex-girlfriend and demanded she visit him, threatening to kill her family if she refused. Later that evening, sometime before midnight, Honie took a cab to the house of Claudia Benn, his ex-girlfriend’s mother. He broke the door in with a rock and then beat, bit, stabbed and sexually assaulted Benn as he killed her, court documents state.
In Honie’s plea to cancel the planned lethal injection, his attorney recounted to the parole board Honie’s traumatic childhood growing up on a Hopi reservation — which he said contributed to alcohol and drug abuse at an early age. These experiences, along with a number of head injuries he received as a child, had a “synergistic effect” with his “extreme intoxication” on the July night when he killed Benn, they argue.
Honie’s attorneys wrote in his petition that he has always shown remorse for the crime, and continues to show remorse. “I regret that I have no excuse for my actions,” he told Benn’s family at his 1999 sentencing. “My heart is sad. My soul cries out every time when I think of what I’ve done. Like I said, if I could change it all, I would. Believe me, I would.”
Death Row Execution Death Penalty Sean Reyes Utah Attorney Generals Office Claudia Benn
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