Ironically, for this most barbarously antiquated means of carrying out a death sentence:

Shortly after midnight [Mountain Time] in the US state of Utah, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff picked up his Apple iPhone, opened up a Twitter “app” on his handset and began tweeting.

But Mr Shurtleff’s 134-character composition was no ordinary post. This was not a piece of miscellany from the 53-year-old’s home life, a link chosen to amuse or interest his followers, nor even a political prod at his Democratic rivals.

Instead, Mr Shurtleff used Twitter to announce that most important of all things: the death of a human being, convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner.

“I just gave the go ahead to Corrections Director to proceed with Gardner’s execution. May God grant him the mercy he denied his victims,” the attorney general wrote.

Shurtleff has 7,000+ followers. He knows from self-promotion. Fifteen minutes after confirmation that he had given the “final nod” he tweeted:

“We will be streaming live my press conference as soon as I’m told Gardner is dead. Watch it at www.attorneygeneral.Utah.gov/live.html” he wrote.

The Supreme Court denied a stay Thursday Night. The marksmen who fired .30 caliber rifles at a target on Gardner’s chest will receive commemorative coins for that service:

“The staff preferred something a little more modern than the ribbons,” [UT Corrections spokesman Steve] Gehrke said. “Since people don’t walk around displaying those anyway, we’re switching to a coin.”

Far from modern, it all sounds rather feudal to me. I’m not alone:

Polls show public support of the death penalty has been dropping steadily since the 1990s, partly because of the number of convictions shown to be wrong by The Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing.

Mr. Holdridge says the number of proven, wrongful executions has now reached 138. And Cleveland-based criminal defense attorney Elizabeth Kelley says that 250 exonerations of death-row defendants in recent years, coupled with medical procedural TV shows such as CBS’s “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” have made the public more sophisticated about the fallibility of scientific evidence.

Some details of Garner’s life:

Gardner first came to the attention of authorities at age 2 as he was found walking alone on a street clad only in a diaper. At age 6 he became addicted to sniffing gasoline and glue. Harder drugs — LSD and heroin — followed by age 10. By then, Gardner was tagging along with his stepfather as a lookout on robberies, according to court documents.

After spending 18 months in a state mental hospital and being sexually abused in a foster home, he killed Otterstrom at age 23. About six months later, at 24, he shot Burdell in the face as the attorney hid behind a door in the courthouse.

So what. If he did it that’s no excuse. But vengeance hurts the vengeful more. Let’s have social restitution rather than retribution. Rehabilitation can work. Remember the most rehabilitated prisoner in America.

You can find me @jwindish, at my Public Notebook, or email me at joe-AT-joewindish-DOT-com.