Supreme Court Gary Gilmore scrapbooks, 1976-1977.

This series comprises four separate scrapbooks that were compiled by an unidentified member of the Supreme Court administrative staff at the time Gary Gilmore's 1977 execution. Gilmore was a career criminal who was sentenced to death after his 1976 killings of Max David Jensen and Bennie Bushnell in Provo, Utah. His case gained national attention after he refused any efforts to delay his execution and, instead, on January 17, 1977, became the first person executed in the United States after a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision declared the practice constitutional. These scrapbooks tell the Gilmore story beginning in November 1976 and cover the execution itself as well as public reaction to it through March 1977. Most of the pages in these books contain assorted newspaper clippings from the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News, though Book 4 also contains published magazine articles that appeared in Newsweek, Time, and Playboy, as well as a handful of correspondence received by the courtfrom people voicing their support or disapproval on the capital punishment issue.