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): AD 34 • Blake Leary • Charlie Spencer • Claude Renoir • Daniel Eberlin • Gabriel Lundberg • Inder Kumar Gujral • Jeanne Manford • John Aislabie • Kate Rusby • Katharine Susannah Prichard • Kevin Richardson (footballer) • Stephen Dawson • The Gathering (band)

Born in the same month (December 1940): A. K. Antony • Brant Alyea • David Gates • Frank Zappa • Gerry Cheevers • Jorma Kaukonen • Willie Brown (American football)