This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 1994, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In the past decade, potential jurors in every Utah capital homicide were asked whether they believed in the Mormon concept of ``blood atonement.''
And the fact that such a question would be asked in a modern courtroom reveals how thoroughly entrenched the idea, born in the mid-1800s, remains in Utah's predominantly Mormon culture.
The idea of atoning for sin has roots in both Islam and the Judeo-Christian tradition; consider the biblical ``eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.''
But while few religious cultures retain a literal interpretation of such punishment, there are those in the Mormon Church who do.
And though The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has denied repeatedly that blood atonement is a doctrine or practice of the church, the idea continues to be used by defendants, lawyers and family members associated with capital crimes.
In one of Utah's most notorious murder cases, lifelong church member Mark Hofmann forged dozens of Mormon documents and, fearing discovery, killed two people with homemade pipe bombs.
Before Hofmann confessed, his father suggested that if guilty, his son would have to pay with his blood. Hofmann escaped the death penalty by pleading guilty to lesser charges and remains in prison.
In the early 1980s, multiple child-killer Arthur Gary Bishop consulted a top church leader who assured him that the method of execution made no difference. The leader said that blood atonement ended with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, according to sociologist L. Kay Gillespie, author of The Unforgiven, a history of Utah's executions.
However, in a letter written before Bishop's execution by lethal injection, the former missionary wrote that his refusal to fight the death penalty was not vainglory but ``a necessary requirement because of my past heinous crimes.''
In 1992, attorneys for Richard Worthington, convicted of murdering a nurse at Alta View hospital, tried to exclude people who believe in the doctrine from the jury.
Just last month, attorneys for condemned child-killer James Edward Wood in Pocatello, Idaho, argued that his defense was undermined by a visit from local church leaders who talked to him about shedding his own blood.
Wood, a Mormon, was sentenced to death in January after pleading guilty to abducting, murdering and then later sexually molesting and dismembering 11-year-old Jaralee Underwood.
In response to the defense's allegations, the LDS First Presidency filed a document in 6th District Court denying the doctrine as it has been popularized.
``The doctrine of atonement through the shedding of blood, as taught by [the Mormon Church] refers only to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,'' the statement read. The question of ``whether and in what circumstances the state should impose capital punishment'' should be decided by the ``prescribed processes of criminal law.''
The church's affidavit included a copy of a 1978 letter from the late Bruce R. McConkie, then an apostle, to a University of Utah law student, outlining the church's position.
Early church leaders, most especially Brigham Young, taught that some sins are not cleansed by Christ's atonement. But, said McConkie, ``the statements pertain to a theoretical principle that has been neither revealed to nor practiced by us.''
Blood atonement ``can only operate in a day when there is no separation of church and state and when the power to take life is vested in the ruling theocracy which was the case in the day of Moses,'' McConkie wrote.
``From the day of Joseph Smith to the present there has been no single instance of so-called blood atonement under any pretext,'' he wrote. ``I have never in over 60 years of regular church attendance heard a single sermon on the subject or even a discussion in any church class.''
Though McConkie may not have heard any speeches or discussions of blood atonement, his counterparts in the 19th century undoubtedly did.
The ``most fervent sermons on blood atonement were preached during the reformation movement in the 1850s, a period of intense Mormon revivalism bordering on fanaticism,'' wrote Martin R. Gardner in an essay on Mormonism and capital punishment.
In addition to Young, Jedediah M. Grant and Heber C. Kimball, both counselors in the First Presidency, ``taught the doctrine of blood atonement and all played major roles in implementing the first capital punishment law in Utah,'' wrote Gardner, law professor at the University of Nebraska.
All three were ``directly involved in the 1851 Deseret Assembly'' that introduced the firing squad as means of execution, according to Gardner.
As a result, Utah is one of only three states that offer a firing squad as an execution choice. Of Utah's 47 executions, 39 were by firing squad, six by hanging and three by lethal injection.
Utah, in fact, ended a decade-long national moratorium on the death penalty when double-murderer Gary Gilmore willingly went before a firing squad.
``Hanging or imprisonment would not suffice for punishment or restitution,'' wrote Gilmore's brother, Mikal Gilmore, in a recent book about their family.
Their mother was LDS, and while Gary Gilmore did not embrace the faith, the concept of blood atonement was part of the family lore.
``The manner of death had to be one in which your blood spilled onto the ground, as an apology to God,'' Mikal Gilmore wrote.
Perhaps the most famous execution was that of Mormon bishop John D. Lee, executed in 1877 for his involvement in the 1857 slaughter of 120 men, women and children, known as the ``Mountain Meadows Massacre.''
As the firing squad was being readied, Lee sat on his coffin and said, ``Center my heart, boys. Don't mangle my body.''
Lee's ``blood spilled into the Utah soil, where the blood of the massacre's victims had spilled a generation before,'' Gilmore wrote.
Apart from murder, wrote Gardner, ``Mormon leaders also taught that sexual misconduct by church members in certain circumstances, as well as the violation of certain sacred covenants, would be dealt with through blood atonement.''
But Gardner agreed with McConkie that this doctrine was understood to operate ``in the past when church and state were not separated.''
Why did the doctrine gain popularity in the first place?
``The Saints had suffered so much after their prophet's death, their expulsion from Nauvoo, and on their migration,'' said Levi Peterson, an English professor at Weber State University. ``The pioneers lost a significant percent of their loved ones, dotting the trek with graves.''
Their guilt would be similar to that of Roman Catholics during the Middle Ages in the aftermath of the plague which decimated Europe, said Peterson.
Religious orders in which members would flog themselves as penance ``arose to deal with the psychological effect of the terrible scourge,'' he said.
``Mormons developed [blood atonement] doctrine to deal with their terrible trials,'' said Peterson. ``When things went wrong, it must have been because of their own sins.''
Indeed, Young had said: ``There are transgressors who, if they knew themselves, and the only condition upon which they can obtain forgiveness, would beg of their brethren to shed their blood, that the smoke thereof might ascent to God as an offering to appease the wrath that is kindled against them.''
The doctrine of blood atonement, then, was ``getting a headstart on God's punishment,'' Peterson said. ``If they helped God out, they might have a better chance in eternity.'' As a novelist, Peterson has used repeatedly the notion of self-punishment in his fiction pieces.
``Blood atonement explains something I have sensed and felt in this culture,'' Peterson said. There exists ``a kind of self-punishing element in the guilt I inherited or felt in the people around me.''
Though historians may argue whether there were any actual cases of blood atonement, stories abound.
The legends ``served both a mythic and moral purpose,'' Gilmore said.
If, for example, the stories were spread by anti-Mormons, ``they illustrated how America regarded the Saints as demons who had turned their religion into a system of ritualistic outrages,'' he wrote.
But if the rumors were perpetuated by Mormons themselves, ``they demonstrated how the bitterness of their history had turned them into a hard people, and how that hardness and meanness had now spilled over into the land that they were settling.''
And, Gilmore argued, the rumors ``helped the Mormons keep their own people in line.''
Gilmore said that his mother ``remembered that these fables were often told to children, in tones that implied that maybe . . . blood atonement weren't altogether banished in early 20th century Utah.''