Once busy Oklahoma death chamber stays quiet into 3rd year

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma, a state with one of the busiest death chambers in the country in recent decades, will enter its third year without an execution in 2018 while prison officials and state attorneys fine tune its procedure for putting condemned inmates to death.

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter said last week he was planning to meet with top prison officials and that he expected more clarity on the state’s new lethal injection protocols “in the next two or three weeks.”

“We need to feel some urgency, but we also need to get it done right,” Hunter said. “I’d say both of those things are equally important.”

Republican Gov. Mary Fallin said she has confidence in Hunter and Department of Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh to develop new protocols, but acknowledged the challenge the state faces in acquiring the lethal drugs.

“The most solemn responsibility for a state is the taking of a life,” Fallin said in a statement Friday. “The state needs to be certain that its protocols and procedures for executions work.”

Of the 2,817 death row inmates awaiting execution in 32 states, 47 of them are in Oklahoma, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center. Like many death penalty states, Oklahoma has struggled in the past decade to obtain the lethal drugs used in executions as manufacturers, including many in Europe, have said they don’t want their products used to kill people.

Fallin reiterated her support of the death penalty for those who commit “heinous crimes” and said she’s prepared for executions to resume under her watch once the new protocols have been approved by the court.

Oklahoma put all executions on hold two years ago after several mishaps, including a botched lethal injection in 2014 and drug mix-ups in 2015 that led to one inmate being executed with the wrong drug and another inmate just moments away from being led to the death chamber before prison officials realized the same wrong drug had been delivered for his execution.

Since then, several top officials connected to the bungled executions have resigned and the state’s multicounty grand jury delivered a scathing report on Oklahoma’s lethal injection process that accused a number of individuals involved in the process of sloppy and careless work.

Allbaugh, the state’s new prisons director, has declined repeated requests by The Associated Press to discuss the new execution procedures, and a spokesman for the agency said only that they are continuing to work on the protocols. Oklahoma law also allows for the use of firing squad, electric chair or nitrogen hypoxia to perform executions, but Allbaugh has previously said he doesn’t intend for Oklahoma to become the first state to use nitrogen gas to execute inmates.

Since executions halted, 16 Oklahoma death row inmates have exhausted their federal appeals and are awaiting dates to be sent to the death chamber inside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

And, a federal lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s execution protocols as unconstitutional remains dormant in federal district court in Oklahoma City, but is expected to be reactivated once the new protocols are released, said Dale Baich, a federal public defender representing a group of Oklahoma death row inmates.

“We’ll review the protocol and at some point, approach the court with our concerns,” Baich said.

The attorney general’s office has said in court filings that it will not request any execution dates until at least 150 days — or about five months — after the new protocols are released.

The death penalty has bipartisan support in the Oklahoma Legislature, and more than two-thirds of state voters supported a pro-death penalty question on the ballot in 2016.

Source: The Associated Press, Sean Murphy, December 28, 2017

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Comments

Alabama executes Jeremy Williams

Tennessee and Oklahoma have put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men in one day. Tennessee and Oklahoma put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other Thursday, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men by lethal injection in one day for the first time since 2010. The Tennessee man was executed for killing a maid at a motel in 1985, and the Oklahoma man for killing his girlfriend in 2003. In Alabama, a man was put to death Thursday evening for killing a 5-year-old girl he had paid her mother to abuse.

Tennessee executes Darrell Hines

The state has spent millions of dollars over decades to execute a seriously ill man who was already incarcerated. The state of Tennessee executed death row inmate Darrell Hines Thursday morning, according to an advocacy group. No formal announcement of the execution has been issued by state leaders yet. The execution was slated for 10 a.m. Thursday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. [DPN update] Hines was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m. CDT. His last meal was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, corn, fries, biscuits, a chicken sandwich, chocolate chip cake, and sweet tea.

Alabama Set To Carry Out Execution This Week

Alabama is preparing to execute Jeremy Williams, who pled guilty to the 2021 rape and murder of five-year-old Kamarie Holland. The execution is scheduled for Thursday (August 13) at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. Williams, who is 41, requested the death penalty and waived his right to appeal, making this the first execution in Alabama this year.

Oklahoma executes Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez

Oklahoma has carried out 1 of 3 executions set for the same day in the United States in another sign of the resurgence of the death penalty in the country. Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was put to death by lethal injection for the murder of his common-law wife in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home. He admitted to police he shot her twice during an argument. Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, did not fight for his life, stunning his attorneys in July when he told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that he didn't want clemency. "It's time for me to pay for what I did," he said.

Tennessee set to execute Anthony Darrell Hines

Barring any last-minute interventions, the Tennessee Department of Correction will execute Anthony Darrell Hines by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville Thursday morning. This week, two courts had the opportunity to halt the execution: the federal court in Middle Tennessee and the U.S. Supreme Court. Gov. Bill Lee announced Tuesday he personally would not prevent the execution. “After deliberate consideration of Anthony Darrell Hines’ request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene,” he said in a written statement. The U.S. Supreme Court has not granted a stay or reprieve.

Tennessee | The doctor who helps put prisoners to death

Dr. Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients—why is he working in the death chamber? Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing. It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Fowler had been called in to help establish an IV line through which the 57-year-old man, Tony Carruthers, would be injected with pharmaceutical drugs. The team had struggled to find a vein, so Fowler was summoned to set a central line—an intravenous catheter inserted into the major vein below the collarbone.

Iran’s War on Women: Executions, Floggings, and the Politics of Fear

The Iranian regime is increasingly using death sentences, corporal punishment, and judicial persecution against women—not only to silence dissent but also to intimidate a society demanding change. The Iranian regime has long viewed women as central to the country’s struggle for freedom—and therefore as central targets of repression. The nationwide uprising of 2022 fundamentally altered the political landscape, demonstrating that Iranian women were no longer merely participants in protest movements but among their principal organizers and symbols. Since then, the authorities have steadily intensified their campaign against women, expanding the use of executions, imprisonment, corporal punishment, and judicial intimidation.

The 'Black Widow' shakes Iran: 10 death sentences for a serial killer who killed 12 men

Kolthum Akbari, an Iranian woman widely dubbed the “Black Widow,” was convicted of serial murders of elderly men she married, often temporarily. Official accounts generally center on 11 murders (plus one attempted murder), though Akbari herself gave varying figures and investigations suggested she had many more marriages. The sentencing occurred primarily in September 2025 in Mazandaran Province, with ongoing reporting and updates into 2026. The 56- to 59-year-old killer confessed to killing at least 11 elderly men after temporarily or officially marrying them; Iranian authorities have linked her to additional marriages and possible further victims.

Arizona prosecutors seek death penalty a second time for 2 inmates

County Attorney Brad Miller said Aug. 6 that the nature of the attack and both men's past criminal records meet the strict legal bar required for execution under Arizona law. FLORENCE, Ariz. - Pinal County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against two inmates accused of violently killing a fellow prisoner behind bars, officials announced Thursday. Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller filed a Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty against Pete Van Winkle and Tracy Hampton in connection with the fatal attack on Kenneth Thompson.

Iran | Executions in Tabriz, Zanjan, Qazvin

Iranian authorities executed at least three prisoners, including two Turks, identified as Amrollah Dousti, Hojjat Khayat, and Yousef Bagheri, in Tabriz and Zanjan Central Prisons. Dousti and Khayat were executed on drug-related charges, while Bagheri was executed for “premeditated murder.” According to information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Dousti, 40, from Bandar Abbas and a father of two, and Khayat, 51, from Tabriz and a father of three, were executed in Tabriz Central Prison on Sunday, August 9, 2026.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog