"I don't think it should be a choice any longer," Ron Allen said. "Let's conduct state business in a more professional way. The amount of publicity (Taylor's execution) created was pathetic. And what his victim's family had to go through must have been horrible."

King says she's not opposed to the firing squad as a means of execution, but doesn't like the publicity that comes with it — a glare that focuses unfairly on the killer, not the victim.

"People forgot about Charla. They could only see that John was going to die, but the fact is a little girl died viciously at his hands. That is not hate talking, that is truth talking."

King said the international press, particularly, accused Utah of using a "barbaric" method of capital punishment and were too caught up in the execution itself to remember why the death was being carried out.

"It was like my daughter's life meant nothing. He was a master at publicity."

When Rep. Sheryl Allen ran legislation to ban firing-squad executions just after Taylor's death, the measure died because it lacked leadership support. A Deseret News/KSL-TV poll commissioned that same year showed 60 percent of Utahns wanted the firing squad preserved as an execution method.

However, she will be back at it again early next year, and thinks this time the measure will pass. The prohibition has the support of the Utah Sentencing Commission as well as the Utah Sheriffs Association.

"The firing squad brings an enormous amount of attention, but the attention is on the method and the criminal, bringing very little to the victim or the viciousness of the crime," Sheryl Allen said. "It becomes the criminal's one last magnificent manipulation."

Senate Majority Whip John Valentine, R-Orem, also wants the state to forbid executions on Sundays, Mondays or holidays.

Right now, Utah law is silent on the issue, which means the 60-day death warrant issued by a judge could mean the condemned would be executed on a holiday with sacred associations.

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E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com