Oklahoma | Lawmakers try again on death penalty moratorium bill

The 2026 legislative session begins in less than a month, and one state senator is looking to “get some traction” on a two-year death penalty moratorium bill, which has carried over from 2025.

Sen. Nikki Nice, D-Oklahoma City, spoke in support of Senate Bill 601 during a press conference, urging the Pardon and Parole Board to “extend mercy” when it considers recommending or denying Kendrick Simpson clemency on Jan. 14.

Advocates said crucial evidence about Simpson’s history and mental health was not fully presented during his 2007 jury trial.

“This is a chance for us to get it right as far as how we look at cases, particularly the case that has been brought before us today in relation to Kendrick Simpson,” Nice said.

Nice then spoke in support of Senate Bill 601, filed by Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, which would create a “Death Penalty Reform Task Force” and stay executions through June 2028.

In 2014 and 2015, two death row inmates suffered botched executions. Richard Glossip was nearly executed too, but then-Gov. Mary Fallin stayed his execution after corrections officials received the wrong drugs for lethal injection. Then-Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to impose a death penalty moratorium until a multi-county grand jury investigation could be completed.

Less than a year later, the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission came together to study the death penalty as implemented in Oklahoma and throughout the United States. In the end, the commission called their findings “disturbing” and unanimously recommended that the moratorium be extended.

“The commission hopes this report will help foster an informed discussion among all Oklahomans,” the report read, “about whether the death penalty in our state can be implemented in a way that eliminates the unacceptable risk of executing the innocent, as well as the unacceptable risks of inconsistent, discriminatory, and inhumane application of the death penalty.”

Rader introduced SB 601 in 2025, but it was never heard on the Senate floor despite receiving bipartisan support in committee. The bill is a mirror of House Bill 3138, filed by Rep. Justin Humphrey, R-Lane, in 2023. HB 3138 stalled after passing committee and was never placed on general order to be heard on the House floor.

Humphrey said he doesn’t think SB 601 will pass despite its merits.

“I don’t think that the attitude towards the death penalty has changed,” Humphrey said. “I do want to go on record saying that I openly support the death penalty. That seems like a strange statement to make when you author a bill two years ago to put a moratorium, but I support a death penalty as long as we have a court system that we can believe in, have faith in, and that we know carries out justice.”

Humphrey mentioned Bob Macy, a former Oklahoma County district attorney considered to be one of the United States’ five “deadliest” prosecutors. Macy was accused of conspiring with Joyce Gilchrist, a forensic scientist, to commit fraud on death penalty cases.

Macy famously sent 54 people to death row, including Richard Glossip, who was almost entirely convicted on one man’s testimony. Glossip has maintained his innocence. He appealed his case to the Supreme Court, which vacated his conviction in 2024 and remanded the case back down to Oklahoma County District Court for a new trial.

Source: journalrecord.com, Katrina Crumbacher, January 8, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde