Oklahoma: New execution date set

Oklahoma Death Chamber

Death date set for last of 3 men to be executed for 1995 Tulsa store clerk's killing; He will be the last of 3 people who received the death penalty in the 1995 fatal beating to be executed.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday set a Jan. 9 execution date for a Tulsa convenience store clerk's killer.

Michael Lee Wilson, 38, is 1 of 4 people who were found guilty of the beating death of Richard Yost, 30, at a QuikTrip at 215 N. Garnett Road more than 18 years ago.

A customer who entered the store about 6 a.m. Feb. 26, 1995, and saw no attendant found Yost's body in a walk-in cooler, evidence at the defendants' trials indicated.

Wilson was a clerk at the same QuikTrip and had finished a shift about 11 p.m. the night before Yost's body was found.

Yost knew Wilson and would have recognized the other 3 defendants because they had visited Wilson at work previously, prosecutors said at the defendants' 1997 trial.

While the other three men were beating Yost to death in the cooler, Wilson, who was 2 days shy of his 20th birthday, went behind the counter and waited on customers, prosecutors said.

2 co-defendants, Darwin Demond Brown, who was 18 at the time of the murder, and Billy Don Alverson, who was 24, have been executed. Brown was put to death at age 32 in 2009. Alverson was executed at age 39 in 2011.

The 4th defendant, Richard Harjo, who was 16 at the time of the murder, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He is now 35.

Following Alverson's execution, Yost's widow, Angela Yost, released a statement.

"This execution will not bring Richard back, nor will it give me the closure that I am looking for," the statement says. "To be honest I do not know if I will ever have true closure."

After Wilson exhausted his appeals, Attorney General Scott Pruitt asked the appeals court earlier this month to set an execution date.

Executions are carried out by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Source: Tulsa World, October 28, 2013

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Christa Pike's Survival Wasn't a Miracle. That's What Should Scare Us.

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