Utah Murderer Faces Execution

A Utah man who slashed his ex-girlfriend’s mother to death in 1998 is asking the state parole board to commute his death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Colleen Slevin and Matthew Brown of the Associated Press report that after decades of failed appeals, Taberon Dave Honie is seeking mercy for a crime that still traumatizes the state’s close-knit Native American community. At a hearing last Tuesday, relatives of 49-year-old Claudia Benn asked the parole board to uphold his death sentence for brutally murdering a “pillar of her family and community—a tribal council member, substance abuse counselor and caregiver for her children and grandchildren.”  Update:  Honie was executed without incident at 12:25 AM Thursday morning.

Honie’s claims of ineffective assistance of counsel were rejected last year by a panel of the Federal Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a decision describing the brutal murder. In 1998 the victim’s daughter Carol Pikyavit, had broken off her two year releationship with Honie, who had moved in with a new girlfriend. On July 9 of that year, Honie called Pikyavit and demanded that she come over to his residence or he would kill her mother. This is not the first time Honie had made such a threat, so Pikyavit who was due at her job, refused and left for work. Both she and her sister were at work while their mother cared for their three daughters. At roughly 12:30 AM, police responded to a 911 call reporting a break-in at Benn’s home and found Honie covered in blood, attempting to leave through the garage. Officers found Benn’s body in the living room with her throat slit and her lower body mutilated with a large butcher knife.  There was blood all over the house indicating that she had fought for her life and the lives of her granddaughters. The medical examiner later testified that the mutilation occurred while Benn was still alive, before Honie slit her throat. One of the granddaughters, a four-year-old, was also covered with blood and later found to have been sexually assaulted.

Honie, who confessed to the murder and the molestation of the little girl, was sentenced to death for these crimes.  At the commutation hearing he told the parole board that he wasn’t in his “right mind” when he murdered Benn, but promised he would not hurt anyone if his sentence was commuted.

He is scheduled for execution by lethal injection on August 8.

Honie’s self-described lapse in judgment put an innocent woman through horrible pain before she died, and ruined the lives of three little girls and their families. Any compassion in this case should be directed toward his victims.

Honie is quite fortunate that Utah’s Paiute Indian Tribe is not determining his method of execution.