Let's do it, Gary

by Larry Chamberlin   Dec 8, 2014


Gilmore faced terminal
confinement in prison:
death row for life waiting
for some natural cause.

He asked to die quickly,
was allowed to choose
the method of his unmaking
(unusual, perhaps, but kind).

Had he been terminally ill,
they would have said
it's God's just puzzle
let God resolve him.

But this was man's work,
they brazenly claimed
man's Justice
so man took him.

Had he a cancer,
asked for assistance
to help him die,
they would have denied him.

But he was a cancer
so five strangers gladly
stepped forward aimed
and took his life.

A firing squad assisted
his state-approved suicide
and depopulated death rows
across the nation.

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  • 9 years ago

    by Larry Chamberlin

    Gary Gilmore was the first man executed in the United States after a ten year hiatus. The lower courts had already halted executions before the Supreme Court found in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia that state laws were unlawful under the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the US Constitution due to vast discrepancies in the structure and application of the state laws. In 1976, in Gregg v. Georgia the Court refused to strike down a new state law that was passed and which avoided the objections stated in the Furman case. Even so, the states did not proceed to execute anyone until Gilmore requested to be executed by firing squad. His wish was granted on 17 January 1977. Four of the five rifles were loaded with live ammo, one was blank. He was pronounced dead immediately. More than seven hundred executions took place nationwide since then. Gilmore's final words are reported to be: "Let's do it."

    See:
    http://www.biography.com/people/gary-gilmore-11730320
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Gilmore
    http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/gilmore/begin_7.html

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