The Executioner s Song, We Follow The Life Of Gary...

In the book The Executioner’s Song, we follow the life of Gary Gilmore as written by Norman Mailer. Mailer describes Gary’s childhood throughout the book as a very rough living, followed by Gary finding himself practically living his adult life in a series of institutions for bad behavior ( mostly burglary). During the course of his young adult life, Gary’s cousin, Brenda, and he had been writing letters back and forth, and eventually Gary is taken for parole in by his cousin’s parents. Quickly the family becomes worn out from Gary’s rough personality traits. He drinks too much, borrows a lot of money, asks a lot of favors, and doesn’t give much in return. He has an almost violent behavior and everyone quickly learns to try to pass†¦show more content†¦The truth of the matter is, however, that Gary was a psychopath and was headed down a bad road. Despite his cousin’s hope for a good Mormon caring town to be rehabilitating for this stone cold criminal, Gary Gilmore was only getting worse. And despite Gary being such a rough character and admitting to the killing of the two young Mormon men, Nicole couldn’t stop her love for Gary and wrote to him often. Being charged with the murder of Ben Bushnell (the stronger of the two cases), and having an incredibly weak defense between Gary Gilmore having shot himself with the same gun and having a trail of blood, an eye witness, and his own family (Brenda) turn him into the police, Gary Gilmore soon admits to the killings and claimed an insanity defense as an excuse (this is an excuse rather than a justification because he is admitting that the act was wrong, however he has an explanation for it happening, such as mental illness. A justification is an act that could be thought to be justified). This defense however does not stick as four psychiatrists said Gary (although had mental problems that I’ll mention again shortly) was aware of what h e was doing and he was aware that those actions were wrong, making him ineligible for that defense, vanquishing his hope for a lesser charge (such as second degree). However, because of the felony-murder rule (because he was committing a felony during the course of the murder), premeditation, and malice (the will to do