Oklahoma: Donald Lee Gilson executed

Proclaiming his innocence and saying he would see his victim in heaven, a man convicted of battering his girlfriend's 8-year-old son and stuffing the dead body in an abandoned freezer was executed Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Donald Lee Gilson, 48, lifted his head and smiled at his family before the lethal combination of drugs began to flow through his veins at 6:14 p.m. He was pronounced dead 5 minutes later, said Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie.

"I'm an innocent man but ... I get to go to heaven and I'll see Shane tonight," said Gilson, who was convicted in the 1995 killing of Shane Coffman, in his final statement.

"It's God's will that this take place."

Gilson's parents, sister, a friend and a pastor witnessed the execution. About a dozen members of the victim's family also watched Gilson die behind a 1-way glass looking into the death chamber. Several others watched on closed-circuit television.

Gilson was convicted of 1st-degree murder in 1998. The boy's remains were found in an abandoned freezer outside a mobile home in rural Cleveland County.

An autopsy showed 2 fractures to the boy's skull, a tooth missing from his right jaw and fractures to his collarbone, shoulder blades, ribs, legs and spine.

"Shane Coffman was only 8 years old when he died at the hands of Donald Gilson," Attorney General Drew Edmondson said in a statement. "My thoughts today are with the survivors of this crime, Shane's siblings."

4 other children who lived with Gilson and his girlfriend, Bertha Jean Coffman, in a mobile home in Cleveland County showed various signs of abuse, and 2 of the children were emaciated and had trouble walking, court records show.

On the day Shane Coffman died, one of the children told investigators Gilson beat the boy with a board and then placed him in a bathtub as punishment for going to the bathroom on the living room rug, according to court records. The children told authorities they heard Shane screaming while in the bathroom with both Gilson and Bertha Coffman.

Gilson's attorneys argued that there is some doubt as to whether Gilson or Bertha Coffman actually killed the boy. Bertha Coffman entered an Alford plea in the case and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But Cliff Winkler, a former Cleveland County Sheriff's Office investigator who worked the case, said he remains confident that Gilson was responsible for Shane's death.

"I have no doubt in my mind about that," Winkler said. "The other children told me that he was the main abuser. They said, 'Mama spanks us sometimes, but he beats us.'

"And the way that child's bones were broken, I'm not sure a woman could hit a child hard enough to do that kind of damage."

Gilson becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Oklahoma and the 90th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1990. Only Texas (437) and Virginia (103) have executed more inmates since the death penalty was re-legalized in the USA on July 2, 1976.

Gilson becomes the 27th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1163rd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin, May 15, 2009