The executioner's song

This is a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of murderer Gary Gilmore's desire to die.

In the summer of 1976 Gilmore robbed two men and then shot them in cold blood.

No one had been executed in America for ten years but Gilmore, rather than have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, wanted to die, and his ensuing battle with the authorities for the right to do so made him a worldwide celebrity and ensured that his execution turned into a gruesome media event.