An Oklahoma death row inmate who was fighting to overturn his death sentence for a 1999 killing in Oklahoma City has died
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An Oklahoma death row inmate who was fighting to overturn his death sentence for a 1999 killing in Oklahoma City has died.
Jimmy Dean Harris, 64, died June 29 at a hospital from long-term health problems, The Oklahoman reported.
Harris was sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of his wife’s boss at an Oklahoma City transmission shop.
Harris shot and killed Merle Taylor on Sept. 1, 1999, at AAMCO Transmissions, where Harris had gone to confront his wife.
Harris was originally sentenced to death in 2001, but an appeals court threw out the sentence because of a mistake by the trial judge.
A second jury chose death in 2005, but Harris was still challenging the sentence after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver found fault with the retrial attorney.
The federal appeals court ordered the case back to Oklahoma City federal court for an evidentiary hearing and review over whether Harris' attorney should have asked for a pretrial hearing on whether he had an intellectual disability that made him ineligible for the death penalty.
That hearing had been scheduled for January.
Executions have been on hold in Oklahoma since a drug mix-up during a scheduled lethal injection in 2015.
Source: tulsaworld.com, Staff, July 5, 2021
Oklahoma | Death-row inmate dies of Covid
06 July 2021 : Death row inmate Nicholas Davis dies after contracting COVID-19.
Davis, awaiting execution for a 2004 slaying in Oklahoma City, died of COVID-19, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Thursday.
Davis, 46, Black, died on April 7 at a prison hospital in Lindsay after contracting the coronavirus, according to a medical examiner’s report.
Davis had several underlying health conditions, including inflammation of the lungs, an autoimmune disease and heart disease, according to the report.
Davis was housed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester awaiting execution for fatally shooting 17-year-old Marcus Smith.
Davis had exhausted all of his appeals, but an execution date had not been set.
According to the Department of Corrections, Davis is 1 of 56 inmates who have died of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic last year.
Source: The Associated Press, Staff, July 6, 2021
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
