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SALT LAKE CITY — The commutation hearing for death row inmate Taberon Dave Honie will be held starting July 22.
The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole announced Tuesday that Honie's hearing will start on July 22 at 8 a.m. and is scheduled to go all day. It will continue the afternoon of July 23. If additional time is necessary, it will conclude the morning of July 24.
Honie, 48, of Cedar City, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Aug. 8.
He was convicted in Iron County's 5th District Court of sexually assaulting and killing his ex-girlfriend's mother, Claudia Benn, in front of her three grandchildren on July 9, 1998. His death sentence has been upheld in numerous legal appeals over the years. On June 10, a judge signed an execution warrant for Honie.
But on June 18, Honie and his attorneys filed a 45-page petition to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole requesting the board commute his sentence from death to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Utah Attorney General's Office filed its own 49-page response arguing the board should deny Honie's request for a hearing.
"He does not, and cannot, dispute his guilt. Instead, he omits nearly all details of his crime that were critical to the sentencing judge's determination that death was warranted. Those details, presented in the state's penalty phase evidence and summarized in the sentencing court's findings and conclusions, alone show that the judge had little choice but to sentence Honie to death even under Utah's exacting standards.
"Utah's death penalty is reserved for only the most horrific of the state's crimes, and this was truly one of them," the state continued in its response.
But on Friday, the board granted Honie a commutation hearing.
At the hearing, Honie will have the opportunity to call witnesses to give testimony. Honie will have the chance to speak. In its response to the petition for a hearing, the state said it does not plan to call any witnesses.
After the hearing, the five-member board will determine, by majority vote, whether to grant or deny the request for life in prison. There is no set timeline for the decision, only that it will be made before Aug. 8.
The last commutation hearing the board held was in 2010 for Ronnie Lee Gardner. But, despite agreeing to hear Gardner's arguments, his commutation petition was denied and he was executed by firing squad.
