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

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