In the debate over how to execute condemned murderers, Utah has a heritage that could be illuminating -- and perhaps point to the future.

Beginning in the mid-1800s, the state allowed one convicted of a capital crime to choose his own way out of this world: beheading, hanging or being shot by a firing squad. In an odd way, this shows at least some consideration for the condemned.

The firing squad may be a relic of frontier days. And a bygone strain of Mormonism held that a criminal could atone for the shedding of blood by having his own blood shed.

By the way, no criminal ever picked having his head lopped off. That option was ended in 1878.

In 1912, murderer J.J. Morris asked his keepers which method cost more. The noose, prison officials replied. "Hang me!" Morris replied. "I want the best Utah's got."

Union organizer Joe Hillstrom was convicted of murdering a grocer in a holdup, and was shot by a Utah firing squad. But labor supporters insisted he was framed, and his nickname remains alive in a folk song's refrain, "I dreamed I saw Joe Hill tonight."

The firing squad was the choice of most of Utah's condemned. Some criminals wanted to make execution as hard on the government as possible; others, more remorseful, saw death by bullet as a fitting end. (Perhaps bullets also seemed quicker, with less pain and a certain outcome.)

In 1879, Wallace Wilkerson refused to be bound to a chair before the firing squad. "I intend to die like a man," he said. But he braced for the shots and threw off the riflemen's aim. The bullets wounded but did not kill him -- not at first. It took him nearly half an hour to die.

Barton Kay Kirkham chose the noose in 1958, partly because it was more expensive but also because, he said, "I heard the shooters get to keep the guns, and they're not getting anything free from me."

Whether coincidentally or not, he was the last man hanged in Utah. The firing squad remained, with the electric chair and, later, lethal injection.

A firing squad shot Gary Gilmore in 1977 for the murder of a Provo hotel clerk. It was the first execution in the United States in years. As such, it drew worldwide attention. Norman Mailer wrote perhaps his best book, "The Executioner's Song," on it -- a bitter irony that gave Gilmore immortality in literature.

The last Utah firing squad did its work in 1996, and the practice was ended in 2004.

Rep. Sheryl Allen, R-Bountiful, led the drive to end that punishment. "We have a media blitz when we have the firing squad," Allen said. "Utah is a grand and wonderful, joyful place to live. When we get international media it should be for the goodness of our people, the beauty of the state and not the method of execution."

If criminals choose the firing squad, she said, it amounts to "one last magnificent manipulation of the system to bring attention to themselves."

There is a lot in Utah history to bolster that view. Death by firing squad can give the condemned more notoriety. In dealing with the worst criminals, it is important to remember that their twisted thinking thrives on things that appall normal people; and the method of execution should take that into account.

Some people may say that the death penalty is wrong precisely because it appeals to killers' sick view of themselves and the world. Putting down killers quietly with drugs appropriately bars them from that last final public melodrama. It's hard not to agree.

A couple of footnotes:

The Utah law that did away with the firing squad does not apply to those sentenced to death before May 3, 2004 -- at last count, four occupants of death row.

And the Legislature foresaw the possibility that the courts could find against lethal injection and left open an option for Utah to return to bullets, which have been upheld as passing the constitutional test. Here's an excerpt from the Utah Code:

"If a court holds that execution by lethal injection is unconstitutional on its face, the method of execution shall be a firing squad ... [or] if a court holds that execution by lethal injection is unconstitutional as applied, the method of execution for that defendant shall be a firing squad."

As we read that, if the U.S. Supreme Court were to decide that lethal injection is "cruel and unusual" under the Constitution, Utah would simply revert to firing squads, which were long approved by the high court. That may not be a good thing, but it would certainly be effective.

The issue of lethal injection is controversial, judging from comments of the justices in oral arguments. But it seems unlikely that the high court would throw the option out.

As Justice Antonin Scalia said, "This is an execution, not surgery ... Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain? We have approved electrocution. We have approved death by firing squad. I expect both of those have more possibilities of painful death than the protocol here."