Gary Mark Gilmore was an American criminal who gained international notoriety for demanding the implementation of his own death sentence for two murders he committed in Utah. After the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Gilmore became the first person in almost a decade to be executed in the United States. His case ignited a national debate on capital punishment and the rights of a condemned person to refuse appeals. His life and execution were famously chronicled in Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, 'The Executioner's Song'.