By the time Michael Sonner shuffled off this mortal coil on April 23rd at High Desert State Prison near Indian Springs, the West had changed around him. But justice, though slow as a desert tortoise and twice as stubborn, hadn’t.
Sonner, age 57, wore the weight of a crime committed three decades past when he gunned down Trooper Carlos Borland, 25, of the Nevada Highway Patrol on a lonesome stretch near Lovelock back in ’93. Now, Trooper Borland wasn’t after gold or glory—just a tank of gas, unpaid and a duty to uphold.
He pulled Sonner over after a “gas-and-go,” not knowing he was facing a jailbird, an escapee from the Tar Heel State. What followed was not a shootout of legends but a cold, sudden murder, where Borland never stood a chance.
Sonner tried to outrun the noose, holing up until SWAT came calling. They took him alive. During his trial in ’94, he asked the jury not for mercy but for the death penalty.
They obliged.
But death is a lazy rider in Nevada some days. The state may keep capital punishment on the books, but the gallows—or whatever modern contraption they use these days—has been gathering dust since 2006. Sonner remained among the 59 marked for execution–his sentence etched more in ink than an outcome.
It wasn’t the executioner but nature, but nature claimed him. The Department of Corrections said he died in custody, an autopsy ordered and kin told.
The rest, as they say, is silence.
So passes a man who once asked to die quickly but instead waited thirty long years for the sun to set. There’s a lesson, but as with most Western tales, you’ll have to squint into the wind to find it.
The Old Blog in the Desert 