It was the third firing squad execution in the United States  all of them in Utah, the only state actively practicing that form of punishment  since 1976, when the death penalty was restored by the United States Supreme Court.

Mr. Gardner was convicted in 1985 of murdering a lawyer, Michael J. Burdell, in a botched escape attempt during a court appearance for an earlier murder. His lawyers, in their appeals, argued that jurors did not hear adequate testimony about the years of abuse he had suffered as a child.

His will probably be one of the last firing squad executions in the nation. The Utah Legislature in 2004 mandated that all executions thereafter be by lethal injection. A person who received a death sentence before the change, however, can still choose between lethal injection and the firing squad. Four other death-row inmates, grandfathered under the old system, have said they may choose death by the gun as well.