Gary Gilmore

Gary Gilmore

Gary Mark Gilmore (December 4, 1940 – January 17, 1977) was an American who gained international notoriety for demanding that his own death sentence be fulfilled following two murders he committed in Utah. He became the first person executed in the United States after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia. (These new statutes avoided the problems that had led earlier death penalty statutes to be deemed unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia.) Gilmore was executed by firing squad in 1977.