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| Michael Lee Wilson |
A co-worker of a man beaten to death nearly 2 decades ago at the Tulsa convenience store where the 2 worked was executed by lethal injection Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
He was pronounced dead at 6:06 p.m. U.S. Central Time
(2406 GMT), according to a spokesman for the Oklahoma prison system.
Michael Lee Wilson, 38, orchestrated the brief but brutal assault on Richard Yost, whose dream was to one day manage the store. Wilson, who was convicted of 1st-degree murder, was the 3rd person executed for the Feb. 25, 1995, crime; the fourth defendant is serving a life term.
The men loitered nearly an hour while waiting for customers to leave, then struck Yost with an aluminum baseball bat 54 times in 131 seconds. They jostled a safe while removing it, but Wilson posed as Yost when a security company called to check an alarm.
And to dampen suspicions among middle-of-the-night customers, Wilson put on Yost's uniform and worked the cash register as Yost lay dying in a pool of blood, beer and milk behind the cooler doors.
The state Board of Pardon and Parole last month rejected Wilson's clemency request on a 4-1 vote. Ahead of the hearing, Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Miller told the panel that Wilson knew Yost had to die so he couldn't identify his robbers.
"Defendant planned the murder and ensured its completion as he could pose as the QuikTrip attendant while Mr. Yost lay in the cooler dead or dying," Miller wrote.
Yost's widow, Pamela Houser-Yost, told the board their 2 sons missed the love Richard Yost would have given them and urged its members to deny clemency.
Police trailed Wilson after he didn't show up for work later that day and stopped all four men in a car about 14 hours after the crime. They carried multiple rolls of $5 bills and had pairs of Nike Air tennis shoes with the price tags still attached.
Wilson told officers that the four had planned for two weeks to rob and kill Yost, and a week before the killing even Yost knew something was up: He asked a police officer to increase patrols in the area because he believed Wilson and his friends intended to rob him.
The chilling assault was captured on the store's surveillance system - video of Wilson stuffing money in his pockets and audio of the bat striking Yost as he pleaded for mercy.
Courts previously rejected Wilson's claims that he may have suffered from schizophrenia or had ineffective lawyers.
Prosecutors said the videotape of the crime showed Wilson engaged in "logical, goal-oriented behavior," and the 10th Circuit said Wilson's case would have been no better off with additional defense evidence - and actually could have been worse.
Darwin Brown, 32, was executed in January 2009, and Billy Don Alverson, 39, was executed in January 2011. The 4th defendant, Richard Harjo, who was 16 at the time of the crime and is now 35, was sentenced to life in prison.
Wilson becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Oklahoma and the 109th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1990. Only Texas (508) and Virginia (110) have executed more inmates since the death penalty was re-legalized in the USA on July 2, 1976.
Wilsom becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1361st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Source: Associated Press, Rick Halperin, January 9, 2014
