The Utah State Parole Board announced Friday afternoon that it will hold a commutation hearing for death row inmate Taberon Honie. Honie had asked the board to delay his execution, scheduled for this summer, and instead allow him to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Jennifer Yim, administrative director of the Utah Board of Pardon and Parole, called it a “critical step” that she said demonstrates the board’s commitment to fairness and integrity in Utah’s criminal justice system. The five-member parole board is now scheduled to hold a hearing in July and announce its decision before Honie’s scheduled execution on August 8.
“The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole remains committed to promoting a process grounded in procedural fairness and accountability, while ensuring that every decision reflects these core principles,” Yim said.
The panel’s announcement came two weeks after Honie submitted a petition asking members to spare his life. It is one of the last steps Honie, 48, of the Hopi-Tewa tribal community, can take to prevent his execution.
In response, the Utah Attorney General’s Office filed a 56-page document last week arguing that Honie did not deserve a chance at a commutation hearing. A copy of the document was sent to the Salt Lake Tribune on Friday in response to a public records request.
Prosecutors said commuting his sentence to life without parole was an “extraordinary measure” that allowed the parole board to grant him clemency. But that clemency, they argued, was not deserved.
In July 1998, Honie called his ex-girlfriend and demanded that she visit him. He threatened to kill her family if she refused. Later that evening, just before midnight, Honie took a taxi to the home of Claudia Benn, his ex-girlfriend’s mother. He broke down the door with a rock and hit, bit, stabbed and abused Benn while killing her, court documents say.
“There is no doubt of Honie’s guilt; he cannot and will not claim otherwise,” the Attorney General’s response states. “There is also no doubt of the brutality and heinousness of his crime, although Honie’s petition does not even begin to address these facts, instead glossing over his actions as a ‘tragic death’ that was the result of a ‘domestic dispute.'”
Honie has been on death row for 25 years – more than half his life – while his lawyers have appealed his sentence in state and federal courts. Earlier this month, a judge cleared the way for his execution, ruling there was no longer any legal reason to delay it.
In Honie’s motion to overturn the planned lethal injection, his attorney described to the parole board Honie’s traumatic childhood on a Hopi reservation, which he said led to alcohol and drug abuse at a young age. Those experiences, along with a series of head injuries he suffered as a child, had a “synergistic effect” with his “extreme drunkenness” on the July night he killed Benn, they argue.
Prosecutors, however, argued that the sentencing judge knew about that background when he ordered Honie’s execution – and that the parole board should not grant a hearing now and consider those reasons. They argued that Honie is merely seeking to retry the penalty phase of his trial when a judge ordered his execution.
They focused their response primarily on the brutality of Benn’s death: While he was killing her, Honie beat and bit her, slit her throat, stabbed her genitals multiple times, and had prepared to have anal sex with her before he realized she had died. Other aggravating circumstances, they said, were that Honie committed the murder in front of several children, including one he also sexually abused that same evening.
Honie’s lawyers 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 sentencing in 1999. “My heart is sad. My soul cries out every time I think of what I did. As I said, if I could change everything, I would. Believe me, I would.”
In their response, however, prosecutors argued that he had given police contradictory information about Benn’s death. For example, he said he had been knocked unconscious by alcohol poisoning and could not remember whether he had blamed the Mexican mafia for the murder or named Benn as the perpetrator of the crime that night.
“Ultimately, his story was that Claudia provoked his reaction and the murder was an accident,” prosecutors wrote, showing that he was not as remorseful as he claimed.
Honie’s lawyers have also filed a petition asking the Utah Supreme Court to stay his execution and order an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the state can use a never-before-used combination of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride in his execution. The lawyers argued that the drug combination is untested and would likely result in an “excruciating death.” Prosecutors in the case have asked the state Supreme Court to allow the execution to proceed.
