Ronnie Lee Gardner says he's example 'of what not to do'

UTAH STATE PRISON — After spending nearly a quarter century, more than half his life, on death row, Ronnie Lee Gardner says he is a changed man.

In 90 minutes of testimony before the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole on Thursday, Gardner painted himself as a remorseful and repentant man — far removed from the child of a broken home who went on to kill two men in the mid-1980s — and asked the five-member board to spare him from a firing squad next week.

"I can do a lot of good," Gardner said when asked why the board should change his sentence to life without the possibility of parole. "First of all, I'm a good example. There's no better example in this state of what not to do."

Gardner said he has taken to counseling fellow inmates and believes he can help troubled children with an organic farm he and his brother want to create on 160 acres of land in northwest Box Elder County.

Gardner's attorney, Andrew Parnes, read a letter the inmate wrote to talk-show host Oprah Winfrey in 2008, in which Gardner asked for money to fund the project.

Gardner spoke calmly as he detailed the killing of Melvyn Otterstrom at a downtown Salt Lake tavern and the courthouse escape that ended with Gardner injuring bailiff Nick Kirk and killing defense attorney Michael Burdell.

While board members thanked Gardner for his candor, members of the victims' families were left uneasy.

"There's no remorse in that boy," said Veldean Kirk, the bailiff's widow.

"He has no conscience," added Sandy Police Lt. Craig Watson, Otterstrom's cousin. "That's how he can talk so matter-of-fact."

Gardner told the board he had stopped making wine in his cell and had learned to control his temper, as evidenced by his lack of serious write-ups over the past five years.

But board members reminded him of his involvement in prison riots, escapes and stabbings. They called him "hell on wheels" and wondered if his efforts to turn things around weren't "too little, too late."

Earlier in the day, witnesses called Gardner's childhood "a truly horrendous upbringing" that contributed to his crimes as an adult.

Psychology professor Craig Haney of the University of California at Santa Cruz said Gardner's childhood was marked by abject poverty, parental neglect, sexual abuse and exposure to drugs that left Gardner addicted to inhalants by age 11.