Oklahoma executes oldest death row inmate
Bigler Jobe Stouffer II spent nearly 4 decades on death row. Thursday his execution took just 16 minutes at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
At 79, Stouffer is the oldest prisoner executed in Oklahoma history.
Stouffer was given a chicken burger, two slices of bread, chips, broccoli, mixed fruit, two biscuits, a fruit drink and one bottle of water.
The 79-year-old did not request a last meal but was served on Wednesday evening, the night before his execution.
Twice tried, convicted and sentenced to death for a murder he claimed he didn’t commit, Stouffer issued these final words: “My request is that my Father forgive them. Thank you.”
Rev. Howard Potts, Stouffer’s spiritual advsor, placed a Bible on Stouffer’s legs and talked quietly to him. At one point Stouffer chuckled and smiled before saying “amen” at least once.
Stouffer’s breathing quickly became heavy upon the first injection. He closed his eyes 3 minutes later and 7 minutes into the procedure prison officials announced he was unconscious.
“He’s gone,” Rev. Potts mouthed to witnesses on the other side of the glass separating the viewing room from the death chamber.
The 3-drug protocol began at 10 a.m. (CST). A prison official gave the time of death as 10:16 a.m.
State Prisons Director Scott Crow said the execution occurred without complications — unlike the October execution of John Marion Grant, who news media witnesses said convulsed and vomited several times.
Stouffer petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to halt his execution, contending the three-drug lethal injection created a risk of unconstitutional pain and suffering. The court rejected the appeal 2 hours before his execution.
Stouffer’s death sentence resulted from a 1985 gun attack that killed Linda Reaves, an Oklahoma City area school teacher, and seriously wounded her boyfriend, Doug Ivens. Prosecutors said Stouffer sought to gain access to Ivens’ $2 million life insurance policy. At the time, Stouffer was dating Ivens’ ex-wife.
Reaves' cousin, Rodney Thomson, spoke to reporters after the execution, saying her murder had consumed family members. “Although long in coming, justice has prevailed,” Thomson said.
Oklahoma’s Parole and Pardon Board recently voted 3-2 to recommend Gov. Kevin Stitt change Stouffer’s sentence to life in prison without parole because of lingering questions over the lethal drug protocol.
Stitt rejected the recommendation. Yet last month he reduced the death sentence of Julius Jones’ to life in prison with no chance for parole. The board had suggested life with the possibility of parole because of concern over evidence used to convict him of murder. The case attracted national attention, including a petition on Jones’ behalf signed by more than 6 million people.
Stouffers execution was the second since Oklahoma resumed the death penalty after a 2015 moratorium caused by botched and problematic lethal drug procedures.
3 more executions are scheduled for the first quarter of next year.
Prior to Stouffer’s execution Thursday, John Boltz, 74, in 2006 was the oldest prisoner put to death.
An estimated 197 executions, including three women, have been recorded in Oklahoma history.
Source: The Register-Herald, Staff, December 10, 20212
Bigler Stouffer executed in Oklahoma without problems of previous lethal injections
McALESTER — Oklahoma executed inmate Bigler Jobe "Bud" Stouffer II Thursday without the issues that caused the last three lethal injections to be described as botched.
The convicted murderer was pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. It was the state's second execution in a month and a half after the practice was halted for more than six years.
"No vomiting, no erratic movements or anything like that. Just, you could see his chest moving as he appeared to breathe. That's about it," said one media witness, Sean Murphy of The Associated Press.
The execution process began at 10:01 a m., Corrections Department Director Scott Crow told reporters. Stouffer was declared unconscious at 10:06 a.m.
For his last words, Stouffer said, "My request is that my Father forgive them. Thank you," media witnesses reported.
In a policy change, Stouffer was allowed to have his personal spiritual advisor, Baptist minister Howard Potts, in the execution chamber with him.
Potts put a hand on Stouffer's foot and read from a Bible, witnesses said. Early in the process, the advisor said something that made Stouffer laugh.
At 79, Stouffer is the oldest inmate in Oklahoma history to be executed.
He is the second oldest inmate to be executed in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
He was put to death by lethal injection for the fatal shooting of Putnam City elementary school teacher Linda Reaves in 1985.
He maintained to the end he was wrongfully convicted.
Media witness Dylan Goforth said Stouffer talked in an interview Wednesday about being at peace and ready to go.
"He felt like if he couldn't prove his innocence while alive then his attorneys would prove it after he was gone," said Goforth, who works for The Frontier.
Three executions scheduled in Oklahoma in 2022
Three more executions are set for next year.
As many as 26 more could be scheduled next year if death row inmates lose a legal challenge to the lethal injection process at a trial in Oklahoma City federal court. The trial is set to begin Feb. 28.
Stouffer filed his own legal challenge after his execution was set. He sought to have his execution delayed until after the trial but was turned down in court three times.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied his last request for a stay about 8 a.m. Thursday.
His attorneys also had sought clemency for him. Gov. Kevin Stitt last week rejected a recommendation to commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Stouffer spent more than three decades on death row because he was tried twice.
He was first convicted in 1985. He was granted a retrial in 2000 when a federal appeals court agreed his defense attorneys had been inept. He was convicted again in 2003 but did not exhaust his appeals of that conviction until 2017.
Prosecutors alleged he intended to kill both Reaves and her boyfriend, Doug Ivens, and staged the crime scene to look like a murder-suicide.
He planted the gun in Reaves' hand after shooting them both, prosecutors alleged.
Ivens was in the middle of a divorce, and Stouffer was dating his estranged wife.
Ivens survived the attack at his Oklahoma City home and identified Stouffer as the shooter. Prosecutors alleged the motive was a $2 million life insurance policy.
More: Vigils held ahead of Bigler Stouffer's scheduled execution
Stouffer also later told his girlfriend in a phone call that he was afraid she would go back to her husband and that he just went berserk, according to testimony.
Stouffer claimed Reaves already was dead when he arrived at the house. He suggested she was murdered because she was going to be a witness in an embezzlement case.
He said at his clemency hearing that Ivens lured him to the "crime scene" and he defended himself because Ivens had a gun. He said Ivens was shot during their struggle.
Jurors at the second trial heard testimony that Stouffer from death row hired hit men to kill Ivens and two others. He denied involvement, saying he was being set up again to keep him in prison.
Family of Linda Reaves thanks Gov. Stitt, AG O'Connor
After the execution, the family of the murder victim thanked the governor and Attorney General John O'Connor for their willingness to carry justice through.
"Although long in coming, justice has prevailed," a cousin, Rodney C. Thomson, told reporters at the penitentiary.
The cousin recalled how Ivens before his death placed a Christmas tree every year on Reaves' grave.
Stouffer did not request a traditional "last meal." He was served a regular evening meal Wednesday that included a chicken patty, bread, fries, broccoli, mixed fruit and two cookies, the Corrections Department said.
His spiritual advisor told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board in November that Stouffer turned his incarceration into a spiritual ministry and regularly shared his faith with other death row inmates.
Previous Oklahoma executions led to protocol concerns
Oklahoma's last execution Oct. 28 led to renewed criticism of the lethal injection process after media witnesses reported inmate John Marion Grant convulsed and vomited on the gurney.
The execution before that — in 2015 — has been described as botched because officials later determined the wrong drug had been administered to stop the heart. Also, witnesses said inmate Charles Frederick Warner complained before dying, “My body is on fire.”
The 2014 execution of inmate Clayton Lockett went awry when an intravenous line failed.
Robert Patton, the Corrections Department director at the time, called a halt to the procedure after Lockett writhed on the gurney, moaned and clenched his teeth. Lockett died anyway 43 minutes after the lethal injection began.
Only about two dozen death penalty foes showed up Thursday morning outside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary for a vigil.
A change in execution times — from 4 p.m. to 10 a.m. — resulted in some not being able to make the trip.
Almost two dozen gathered outside the governor's mansion for a vigil there Thursday morning. Gigi Normand, an activist with Death Penalty Action, criticized Stitt.
"How can he be pro-life and continue to kill? He can't say Oklahoma is the most pro-life state with the death penalty," she said.
In a statement released after the execution, the archbishop of Oklahoma City called on state leaders to begin a conversation "about how capital punishment aligns with our pro-life values."
“The dignity of human life must never be undermined even in the case of someone who has done great evil. The death penalty does little to heal the wounds of grief and loss, and only perpetuates the violence we are seeking to eradicate," the archbishop, Paul S. Coakley, said.
Nation's oldest executed inmate in modern era was 83
Alabama executed an 83-year-old inmate in 2018 for a deadly pipe bombing.
Oklahoma has executed more than 190 men and three women since 1915. The oldest had been John Albert Boltz. He was 74 when he was put to death in 2006 for murdering his stepson.
Source:
oklahoman.com, Nolan Clay, J. C. Smith, December 10, 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
