His mother and father were torn from their families and sent to Indian boarding schools; they never learned how to parent before raising their own children in abject poverty without electricity or running water.
Taberon Honie was neglected, drank his first beer at age five and started using marijuana at age ten. He suffered multiple head injuries at a young age. That traumatic childhood, which Homie’s lawyers describe in a plea for his life, had a “synergistic effect” with his “extreme intoxication” on the July night of 1998 when he killed Claudia Benn, they argue.
Honie showed sincere remorse for killing Benn, they claim in a 48-page motion to commute his death sentence filed late Friday with the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. At his sentencing, they say, Benn’s daughter – Honie’s ex-girlfriend, who has a daughter with him – testified she would be satisfied with a life sentence without parole.
And today, according to the lawyers, the couple’s 27-year-old daughter wants to tell the parole board that she does not want her father to be executed.
Unlike in some other states, the governor of Utah cannot commute a death sentence – only the parole board has that power.
“This power is a matter of mercy and compassion,” Honie’s lawyers wrote to the panel. “Mr. Honie stands before you and asks you to grant him mercy and commute his death sentence to life without parole.”
A plea for clemency to the Utah State Parole Board is one of the last steps 48-year-old Honie, of the Hopi-Tewa tribal community, can take to avoid his execution, currently scheduled for August 8.
His lawyers also filed a petition with the Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday asking him to stay his execution and order an evidentiary hearing to determine whether the state can use the never-before-used combination of ketamine, fentanyl and potassium chloride to execute him by lethal injection. The lawyers argued that the drug combination was untested and would likely result in an “excruciating death.”
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. Last week, a judge cleared the way for his execution, ruling that there was no longer any legal reason to delay the execution.
The Attorney General’s Office now has until Friday to file its response to Honie’s motion. The parole board will then review the documents and decide whether there are “substantial facts” that require a hearing.
Jennifer Yim, administrative director of the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole, said the board is not allowed to address “legal or constitutional issues” that have previously been considered by the courts or should have been considered by the judiciary.
Yim estimates that after prosecutors submit their response, the committee will need about two weeks to decide whether to grant a hearing. That hearing would likely be in mid- or late July. Such commutation hearings are rare in Utah, she said. The last hearing was for Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010, but the committee denied his request and he was executed by firing squad.
The parole board will be able to complete Honie’s commutation process without delaying the currently scheduled execution, Yim said.
These are the main arguments Honie’s lawyers are putting forward to the parole board to save the man’s life.
“My soul cries out every time I think about what I have done”
Honie’s lawyers wrote to the parole board that he had always shown remorse for killing Benn. At his sentencing in 1999, he told Benn’s family that he was deeply sorry.
“I regret that I have no excuse for my actions,” he told them. “My heart is sad. My soul cries out every time I think about what I have done. As I said, if I could change everything, I would. Believe me, I would.”
Honie’s lawyer wrote in his request for a commutation that the man continues to regret his actions.
On July 9, 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 Benn’s house, where she was babysitting her three grandchildren. He broke down the door with a rock and hit, bit, stabbed and sexually abused Benn, court documents say.
Police arrived after a neighbor called to report a gunshot. Honie, who was drunk, went outside covered in blood and told police officers, “I stabbed her. I killed her with a knife.”
Officers found Benn’s three grandchildren in the house. According to documents, one child was covered in blood.
A difficult childhood on a Hopi reservation
According to the petition, Honie grew up in First Mesa, a Hopi reservation in Arizona. His family lived in a two-room house without running water or electricity. The family slept in one room and another room with a kitchen.
The cramped conditions made it difficult for him to escape his parents’ frequent drinking and arguments, his lawyers wrote.
“There is no privacy in a two-room apartment,” the petition states, “the children could not escape their parents’ drinking, arguing and fighting.”
His parents had problems as children themselves, the petition says, and were sent to Native American boarding schools as young people – a common attempt at the time to take Native American children away from their families to assimilate them into white culture. They never learned to be parents, Honie’s lawyers wrote, because their own parents cared for them. And they witnessed alcoholism, domestic violence and childhood neglect – all experiences they repeated as parents and passed on to Honie’s generation, the petition says.
“These intergenerational traumas of his family and people were inherited by Mr. Honie through ‘genetic, biological, behavioral, psychiatric and emotional legacies,'” the petition states. “And it was not just Mr. Honie who was affected; his siblings have their own problems, including depression, suicide, legal difficulties and problems maintaining close relationships.”
Even as a prepubescent, his lawyers say, Honie and his friends were using cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana and drinking alcohol – substances he abused until the day he was arrested for Benn’s murder.
The man also suffers from depression, the petition states, and suffered several traumatic brain injuries during his childhood, which, according to those around him, changed his personality.
Stereotyping in the verdict
Honie’s lawyers wrote in his petition that “one of the worst stereotypical attitudes toward Native Americans reared its head” during his 1999 sentencing after a judge was presented with evidence of Honie’s drug and alcohol abuse, as well as his extreme state of intoxication when he killed Benn – who had worked as a drug counselor.
The prosecutor, Honie’s lawyers wrote, compared the value of Honie’s life to that of Benn – noting that Honie “did not murder a drunken Indian in the park” or someone who spent his life “drinking alcohol, puking, walking the streets and stealing from Wal-Mart.”
“He murdered someone these people look up to,” the prosecutor said. “He murdered a superstar of the Paiute community.”
It was a judge who ultimately decided to sentence Honie to death, but a juror who found him guilty later wrote in a statement that she believed Honie “didn’t stand a chance” because he was Native American. She wrote that he might have received a lighter sentence if he had been a white man who was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – drawing a comparison to Mark Hacking, who was sentenced in 2005 to 6 years to life in prison for killing his pregnant wife.
“Mr. Honie was sentenced to death because he was not a Mormon,” the juror wrote in a statement. “Mormons do not put Mormons on death row.”
Productive in prison
Honie has adapted to prison life and has been productive during the 25 years he has been incarcerated, his lawyers told the parole board in his petition. He graduated from high school while in prison – an effort, his lawyers said, he made for his daughter so she would not use his lack of education as an excuse to thwart her own education. While in prison, he also learned to be a plumber and worked in prison for two years – he was entrusted with tools such as screwdrivers, a razor and pliers.
Although Honie was involved in a fight last July, his lawyers said, they said he had no previous convictions for violent altercations.
They said if the board grants him clemency, he will continue to live “peacefully” in prison and pose no threat to other inmates or guards. He remains close with Benn’s daughter, his ex-girlfriend, and has a relationship with his own daughter and granddaughter.
“The execution of Mr. Honie will only cause further suffering to his family and daughter,” his lawyers wrote. “Mr. Honie does not need to be executed and deserves mercy. A life sentence is appropriate.”
