Oklahoma carries out 3rd execution since capital punishment resumed in state last year
Oklahoma on Thursday executed an admitted double murderer who had been diagnosed multiple times as schizophrenic.
Donald Anthony Grant, 46, was declared dead at 10:16 a.m.at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
It was the state's 3rd execution since capital punishment resumed last fall after a hiatus of more than 5 years. It was the 1st in the nation this year.
Officials gave details about Grant's execution shortly after it happened.
A total of 18 witnesses were in the room, including local media, in Grant's final moments.
Sean Murphy with the Associated Press was one of the witnesses of the execution. He's witnessed 16 executions, including five with the new three-drug cocktail.
Murphy says Grant had a lot of last words to say and kept talking after the mic was cut off. He says Grant also had tears in his eyes. 2 News' Naomi Kiett confirms also seeing tears coming down his face.
His breathing became labored at 10:05 a.m. before appearing to be unconscious a moment later.
Consciousness was checked at 10:08 a.m. and later pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m.
A witness from the Oklahoman describes the execution as "uneventful" and similar to last month's execution of Bigler Stouffer.
In October, John Marion Grant vomited and convulsed after he was administered midazolam, the first drug in the three-step lethal injection process.
Since then, many death row inmates and their legal teams have submitted requests to courts to put a pause on executions.
Gilbert Postelle and Donald Anthony Grant both asked for a temporary injunction to delay their executions until after a trial challenges whether Oklahoma's current execution protocols are considered to be constitutional. The trial is currently set to start on Friday, Jan. 28.
A federal judge denied the request. Grant and Postelle have since asked for a firing squad as an alternative to receiving the lethal injection. ODOC does not currently have alternative execution protocols in place for any method other than lethal injection.
The U.S. Supreme Court has also denied Grant’s application for a temporary stay of execution on Wednesday.
Psychiatric disorders
Death penalty opponents have pushed to have those who are severely mentally ill added to the list of those ineligible for the death penalty. That list already includes juveniles and individuals with intellectual disability.
"Executing someone as mentally ill and brain damaged as Donald Grant is out of step with evolving standards of decency," his attorneys told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board in their failed bid for clemency.
Attorneys for the state told the parole board his jury either rejected his claim of schizophrenia or decided it did not mitigate his crimes. Witnesses for the state testified at his trial in 2005 that he was really antisocial and faking symptoms of mental illness.
Grant was executed for murdering 2 workers at a LaQuinta Inn in Del City during a robbery on July 18, 2001.
He confessed to committing the robbery to bail his girlfriend out of jail. He admitted he killed manager Brenda McElyea and front desk clerk Suzette Smith so they couldn't identify him.
McElyea, 29, was shot in the head. Smith, 43, was shot 3 times, cut repeatedly with a knife, beaten over the head and had her neck twisted.
"It was something right out of a Stephen King movie," a crime scene investigator recalled.
Grant said he got $1,500 out of the robbery and used $200 to bond his girlfriend out of jail. She later testified against him, saying he acted proud over what he had done.
"He didn't have any remorse," she said.
A psychologist who examined Grant in 2001 reported he "lapses into paranoid ramblings regarding the President, CIA, FBI, Congress, and, most significantly when I saw him, the United Nations being of the devil and going against the 'Five percenters' who are the 'true believers.'"
A psychologist who examined him in 2002 reported he believed he would return to Oklahoma 16 years after his execution to initiate Armageddon.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday denied his request for an emergency stay. His attorneys had complained Oklahoma's lethal injection procedure would expose him to severe pain in violation of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Grant becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Oklahoma and the 115th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1990. Grant becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1, 541st overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Source: oklahoman.com, Emily Farris; Rick Halperin, January 27, 2022
Oklahoma death row inmate who requested firing squad is executed by lethal injection
An Oklahoma death row inmate who had requested execution by firing squad was executed by lethal injection on Thursday, according to the state Department of Corrections.
The execution of Donald Grant "was carried out with zero complications" at 10:16 a.m., state Attorney General John O'Connor said in a statement.
In October 2021 the state resumed executions by lethal injection, after a lengthy hiatus following a botched execution in 2014.
Grant and another death row inmate, Gilbert Postelle, had asked a federal judge to intervene and allow their executions by firing squad rather than lethal injection. The judge denied the preliminary injunction.
Grant's lawyers appealed to the US Supreme Court for a stay, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh denied the application.
Grant was sentenced to death for the 2001 murders of Brenda McElyea and Felecia Suzette Smith, according to court documents filed to the Supreme Court by the Oklahoma attorney general.
"Justice is now served for Brenda McElyea, Felecia Suzette Smith, and the people of Oklahoma," the attorney general said in a statement.
Postelle is scheduled to be executed on February 17.
In their initial petition to the court, lawyers for the 2 inmates had sought an injunction to stop Oklahoma from using lethal injection to administer the death penalty. Attorneys for the inmates had asked for the executions to be delayed pending a late February trial on the constitutionality of the lethal injection protocol.
Testimony submitted by the plaintiffs in court filings from a "board-certified anesthesiologist and a board-certified pain medicine specialist" alleged that execution by firing squad -- not Oklahoma's process of lethal injection -- is appropriate because "firing squad will reliably cause a death that will be quick and virtually painless."
On November 30, 2021, Oklahoma's Pardon and Parole Board voted 4-1 against recommending clemency for Grant. CNN affiliate KOCO reported that during the hearing, Grant's lawyers argued that although their client admitted to a 2001 double murder, he shouldn't be executed because he "is severely mentally ill."
Source: CNN, Staff, Janaury 28, 2022
