[3] He described first having had alcohol when he was five years old, and in a later appeal, his attorneys stated he grew up in poverty and suffered multiple head injuries as a child.
[5] The murder victim, 49-year-old Claudia Marie Benn, was a member of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah.
[7] On the evening of July 9, 1998, Honie called Pikyavit, demanding that she visit him immediately; he threatened to kill several of her family members if she did not comply.
Hours later, Honie broke into the house Pikyavit shared with her mother, Claudia Marie Benn, in Cedar City, Utah, by shattering a sliding glass door.
[2][3][7] In the early hours of the next day, police officers came to Benn's house, responding to a 911 call from one of her neighbors.
The responding officers found a smashed window and Benn's partially naked and mutilated corpse, with deep stab wounds to her anus and vagina.
[2] On May 20, 1999, he was sentenced to death by lethal injection after an Iron County court convicted him of aggravated murder, burglary, object rape, and forcible sodomy.
[1][2][3][8] On January 11, 2002, Honie lost his first round of appeals after failed attempts to challenge the constitutionality of the death penalty in Utah and claims of racially motivated prosecutors.
[9][10] In 2013, Honie filed another appeal, claiming that his attorneys did an inadequate job at defending him and reviewing his background.
[5] On June 24, 2024, it was reported that Honie's attorney filed several petitioning motions to halt his execution.
Honie flatlined at 12:21 am, at which point his family members were permitted to enter the execution chamber and perform a "spiritual ceremony" over his body; afterwards, a medical examiner officially pronounced him dead at 12:25 am.