Oklahoma prepares for first execution in nearly seven years on Thursday

OKLAHOMA CITY — Pam Carter wrote in 2000 that she still looked at the answering machine every day expecting a message from her mother.

“Mom never failed to leave a daily message on my answering machine,” she wrote in a letter given to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. “It was usually just an ‘I love you.’”

Her mother, Gay Carter, worked at the Dick Connor Correctional Center in Hominy in 1998 when inmate John Marion Grant pulled her into a mop closet and stabbed her 16 times. Five stab wounds struck vital organs. She died of internal bleeding.

Grant on Thursday could become the first inmate executed in Oklahoma in nearly seven years since the state halted executions due to problems with the lethal-injection procedure.

According to DOC protocol, he will be offered a mild sedative no later than four hours before the execution.

If no stay is issued by a court, he will be given an opportunity to say his last words about 4 p.m. Thursday.

He then will be administered a lethal dose of chemicals designed to kill him at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

For his last meal, served between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on the day before the execution, Grant has requested two bacon cheeseburgers with onion, tomato, pickles, lettuce and mustard; half a gallon of Neapolitan ice cream; a large bag of barbeque chips; a large package of Nutter Butter sandwich cookies; and a 2-liter bottle of Mr. Pibb, according to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. The last meal must cost $25 or less.

On Oct. 5, the Pardon and Parole Board chose not to recommend that Gov. Kevin Stitt grant clemency to Grant. It was his second clemency denial.

Grant has a lengthy criminal history, dating back to when he was 11 years old. He spent time in the juvenile system before going to the adult corrections system.

Defense attorneys said he grew up in a troubled and poor home. They said the state failed to provide him proper treatment.

The state put executions on hold in 2015.

The decision came after the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014 and the 2015 execution of Charles Warner using the wrong drug.

In March 2018, Oklahoma announced that it would use nitrogen gas to execute condemned inmates because it could not find the drugs for the lethal-injection process.

A law in 2015 allowed for nitrogen hypoxia to be used as an execution method.

Two years after the announcement about using nitrogen gas, the state said it had secured a reliable source for the drugs and would resume executions by lethal injection.

The drugs to be used Thursday are midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

“The Department of Corrections has addressed concerns regarding carrying out the death penalty and is prepared to follow the will of the people of Oklahoma, as expressed in state statute, and the orders of the courts by carrying out the execution of inmates sentenced to death by a jury of their peers,” Department of Corrections Director Scott Crow said.

Stitt has toured the execution chamber and been briefed on the process, said Charlie Hannema, a spokesman for the governor. He will not witness the execution, Hannema said.

Between 1915 and 2015, some 192 men and three women have been put to death in Oklahoma, according to the DOC.

Source: tulsaworld.com, Barbara Hoberock, October 27, 2021

🚩 | 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

Oklahoma Sets November Execution Date for Air Force Veteran Jim Pavatt Amid Claims of Wrongful Conviction

OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has scheduled the execution of Air Force veteran and longtime death row prisoner Jim Pavatt for Nov. 12, as his attorneys continue to challenge his conviction and contend that prosecutors relied on false arguments, disputed forensic evidence and an alleged confession they later described as bogus. Pavatt, who served nearly 22 years in the Air Force and rose to the rank of master sergeant, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2001 killing of Rob Andrew in Oklahoma City. His execution is scheduled for the day after Veterans Day.

Indiana high court sets Nov. 5 execution date for convicted child killer

The court’s decision came a little more than two months after Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita asked the justices to schedule Weisheit’s execution. State attorneys argued Weisheit had exhausted his state and federal appeals, had no active stay of execution, and could lawfully be put to death. The inmate’s attorneys opposed setting a date, saying they needed more time to pursue available legal proceedings and possible executive clemency. The defense additionally pointed to public records that it said showed the Indiana Department of Correction lacked the drugs needed to conduct an execution and had no lawful source from which to obtain them.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

Florida executes Harold Gene Lucas

Florida state officials executed 74-year-old Harold Gene Lucas by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, concluding a 50-year legal saga stemming from the 1976 murder of a 16-year-old girl in Bonita Springs. STARKE, Fla. -- A man convicted of killing a teenage girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends was put to death Tuesday in the first of three executions planned this month in Florida. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, authorities said. He was sentenced to death for the 1976 shooting attack on Jill Piper and the wounding of her friends, Richard Byrd Jr. and Terri Rice.

Algeria's President orders Penal Code amendment to introduce death penalty with immediate execution

The president has raised the possibility that some of the fires may have been criminally set and ordered authorities to investigate their causes and identify those responsible. Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has ordered amendments to the country’s penal code to allow the death penalty to be carried out against people convicted of deliberately setting forest fires, after a wave of devastating blazes killed 12 people and caused extensive damage across the country.

Hanging of Osaka Arsonist is Japan’s First Execution Under Takaichi Government

As a majority of the international community has abolished capital punishment. Japan and the U.S. are the only two countries in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that put people to death. The execution of Takami Sunao—an arsonist whose 2009 attack in Osaka killed five—on August 21, 2026, was Japan’s first use of capital punishment in just over a year. Over a Decade from Sentencing to Execution Takami Sunao was executed on August 21, 2026 , for a 2009 arson attack at an Osaka pachinko parlor that killed five people. In July 2009, Takami poured gasoline on the floor of a pachinko parlor in Osaka and set it alight, killing 5 customers and staff members and injuring 10 more. While the defense argued that he was in a state of diminished capacity, the Supreme Court finalized his death sentence in February 2016. The execution took place 17 years after the initial crime and 10 and a half years after the death sentence was finalized.

Florida set to carry out 14th execution this year in the nation's busiest death chamber

MIAMI (AP) — A Florida man convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends is set to be executed Tuesday in the first of three lethal injections scheduled this month in the state. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is set to receive a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke starting at 6 p.m. He would be the 14th prisoner put to death this year in Florida, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has already signed death warrants for two more executions set for later this September.

Ex-corrections officials urge governor to commute Kansas death sentences

Former Kansas corrections officials are urging Governor Laura Kelly to grant clemency to the state's death row inmates. Former Kansas Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz has several reasons why he thinks the state should abolish the death penalty. Werholtz, who served as secretary from 2002 to 2010 and returned on an interim basis in 2019, uses his discussions with peers and family members of victims as well as experiences of seeing wrongly convicted people getting exonerated as his guiding points.

Florida | Jury recommends death sentence for Jeffrey Crum in killing of 12-year-old girl

BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — A Hernando County jury has recommended the death penalty for a 65-year-old man who was found guilty last week of raping and killing 12-year-old Jennifer Odom. Sentencing for Jeffrey Crum was held this week. Crum abducted Odom in 1993 after she stepped off her school bus in Pasco County. Her body was found in a Hernando County orange grove six days later.

Japan executes man convicted of killing five in 2009 Osaka pachinko parlor arson

Japan on Friday announced the execution of a man convicted of killing five people after setting fire to an Osaka pachinko parlor in 2009, the first execution by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi 's government as the country faces growing calls for more transparency and the abolition of capital punishment. The Justice Ministry said Sunao Takami, 58, was hanged to death earlier Friday. Takami in 2009 set fire to the crowded pachinko parlor in Osaka by spreading gasoline and throwing a lit match, engulfing the building, killing five and injuring 10 others, Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi said.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog