Gary Gilmore

Gary Gilmore
Portland Police Bureau mugshots
Born	Faye Robert Coffman (1940-12-04)December 4, 1940 McCamey, Texas, U.S.
Died	January 17, 1977(1977-01-17) (aged 36) Utah State Prison, Draper, Utah, U.S.
Cause of death	Execution by firing squad
Criminal status	Executed
Parent(s)	Frank Gilmore Sr. (father) Bessie Gilmore (mother)
Relatives	Mikal Gilmore (brother)
Conviction(s)	First degree murder Armed robbery (3 counts) Assault (2 counts)
Criminal penalty	Death
Details
Victims	Max Jensen Bennie Bushnell
Date	July 19 & 20, 1976
State(s)	Utah
Location(s)	Orem Provo
Date apprehended	July 21, 1976

Gary Mark Gilmore (born Faye Robert Coffman; December 4, 1940 – January 17, 1977) was an American criminal who gained international attention for demanding the implementation of his death sentence for two murders he had admitted to committing in Utah. After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia, he became the first person in almost ten years to be executed in the United States.^[1] These new statutes avoided the problems under the 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia, which had resulted in earlier death penalty statutes being deemed "cruel and unusual" punishment, and therefore unconstitutional (The Supreme Court had previously ordered all states to commute death sentences to life imprisonment after Furman.). Gilmore was executed by a firing squad in 1977.^[2] His life and execution were the subject of the 1979 nonfiction novel The Executioner's Song, by Norman Mailer, and the 1982 TV film of the novel starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore.