Gary Gilmore

Gary Mark Gilmore was an American criminal who gained international attention for demanding the implementation of his death sentence for two murders he had admitted to committing in Utah. After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia, he became the first person in almost ten years to be executed in the United States. These new statutes avoided the problems under the 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia, which had resulted in earlier death penalty statutes being deemed "cruel and unusual" punishment, and therefore unconstitutional. Gilmore was executed by a firing squad in 1977. His life and execution were the subject of the 1979 nonfiction novel The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer, and 1982 TV film of the novel starring Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore.

4 December 1940

Born on the same birth date (4 December 1940): Gerd Achterberg

Born on the same birth day (4 December): Cassandra Wilson • Jane Lubchenco • John Aislabie • Mina Caputo • Roberta Bondar • Shannon Briggs • Stanley Argyle

Born in the same month (December 1940): A. K. Antony • Anthony Fauci • Boris Ignatyev • David Gates • Don Francisco (television host) • Edward C. Prescott • Eugene Record • Gerry Cheevers • Hilary Spurling • Jeffrey R. Holland • Kåre Valebrokk • Lawrence Bergman • Mamnoon Hussain • Mike Denness • Nick Buoniconti • Phil Ochs • Sanjaya Lall • Willie Brown (American football)