This week in 1977

“Let’s do it!”

— Gary Gilmore, convicted of murder, firing squad, Utah.
Executed January 17, 1977

With a hood over his head and a paper target attached to his chest, Gilmore became the first man executed in nearly ten years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s reinstatement of the death penalty. Gilmore confessed to shooting motel clerk Bennie Bushnell, age twenty-five, twice in the head while he lay on the floor during a robbery. Gilmore’s troubled life was chronicled by Norman Mailer in his book “Executioner’s Song,” and he was portrayed by actor Tommy Lee Jones in the TV adaptation of the book.