 |
Brian Darrell Davis |
Davis is scheduled to be executed June 25 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
The board voted 4-1 last week to recommend clemency for Davis, who was convicted in Kay County of raping and stabbing to death his girlfriend’s mother in 2001. Board members recommended that the death sentence be commuted to life without parole.
Fallin’s office issued a statement Thursday evening, saying the governor had denied clemency to the killer.
Alex Weintz, spokesman for the Governor’s office, did not elaborate on Fallin’s reasoning for going against the recommendation for clemency.
“The governor reviewed the case carefully and takes this responsibility very seriously,” he said.
Attorney General Scott Pruitt denounced the board’s clemency recommendation, calling the decision “incomprehensible” based on the violence of Davis’s crimes.
Davis did not deny killing Sanford, but he told the board at his clemency hearing that there were facts and circumstances jurors may not have been aware of when convicting him.
Clemency is rare in Oklahoma death-penalty cases: Only four death-row inmates have been granted clemency in Oklahoma since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. It has executed 103 people during that time, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Source: Tulsa World, June 13, 2013