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Oklahoma Court Schedules 25 Executions Between August 2022 and December 2024 [1]

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Date: 2022-07-24

News

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has set execution dates for 25 of the state’s 43 death-row prisoners, scheduling nearly an execution a month from August 2022 through December 2024. If carried out, the execution schedule, unprecedented in the state’s history, would put to death 58% of the state’s death row, including multiple prisoners with severe mental illness, brain damage, and claims of innocence. The court issued its execution schedule in two orders on July 1, 2022, in response to an application filed on June 10 by Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor. O’Connor sought the execution dates four days after Federal District Judge Stephen Friot denied a challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s lethal-injection protocol brought by 28 of the state’s death-row prisoners. Oklahoma uses a three-drug execution process that includes the controversial drug midazolam, which has been implicated in multiple botched executions. The state court’s execution orders came two weeks after the prisoners filed notice in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit that they intended to appeal Judge Friot’s ruling. Under the schedule, Oklahoma would begin to execute prisoners before the circuit court can rule on the prisoners’ appeal. The state previously executed four prisoners while the federal trial on the drug protocol was pending. The executions are set to take place in four phases of six executions each, plus an additional 25th execution. Within each phase, the executions are scheduled at four-week intervals, followed by an execution-free month before the start of the next phase. James Coddington is scheduled to be the first prisoner put to death, with an execution date of August 25, 2022. All prisoners facing execution in Oklahoma are afforded a clemency hearing within three weeks of their execution date. The Pardon and Parole Board, which has the responsibility to conduct those hearings, meets in public session only once each month and requested that it conduct no more than one clemency hearing per meeting.

A Death Penalty Information Center review of the 98 U.S. executions carried out from 2017 through 2021 found that nearly 85% of those executed had evidence of one or more of the following significant impairments: serious mental illness; brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the intellectually disabled range; and chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect, and/or abuse. Likewise, the prisoners slated for execution by Oklahoma are disproportionally individuals with serious mental health issues and significant defects in their trial and appellate proceedings. Many of the prisoners are severely mentally ill, including at least two who were allowed to represent themselves despite their mental disorders. At least five have brain damage. Others experienced severe trauma, received harsher sentences than less-culpable co-defendants, or had inadequate representation at trial. Nearly half (12) of the prisoners scheduled to be executed were prosecuted in Oklahoma County, a county with a long history of misconduct in its capital prosecutions. DPIC’s 2022 prosecutorial accountability project found that eleven death sentences imposed in the county have been reversed or prisoners exonerated because of prosecutorial misconduct, while another eleven who were sentenced to death based on testimony by disgraced police chemist Joyce Gilchrist were executed before her systemic misconduct came to light. DPIC’s 2021 Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic found that five death-row exonerees had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in Oklahoma County, more than in all but three counties in the country. In addition, in November 2021, Governor Kevin Stitt commuted Julius Jones’ death sentence after the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board twice recommended that Jones’ sentence be reduced out of concerns regarding his probable innocence Oklahoma County is responsible for more executions in the past fifty years (44) than any other county outside of Texas, and currently ranks 5th in the nation for most executions. If all 12 executions are carried out, it would move to 3rd in the nation, behind only Harris (Houston) County and Dallas County. Another five prisoners scheduled for execution were prosecuted in Tulsa County, which with 17 executions is currently tied for 6th-most executions of any county. Perhaps the most well-known of the prisoners scheduled for execution is Richard Glossip, whose attorneys filed a motion for a hearing on his innocence claims the same day the state set his execution date. A bipartisan group of Oklahoma legislators presented findings on June 15 from an independent investigation into Glossip’s case. Glossip’s attorneys say the new evidence uncovered in that investigation, including the finding that prosecutors ordered police to destroy a box of evidence, demands a new hearing. The state scheduled an execution date of September 22, 2022 for Glossip, marking the fourth time he has faced an execution date. After the execution schedule was announced, Republican State Rep. Kevin McDugle, who spearheaded the independent investigation into Glossip’s case, said, “I’m a firm believer in the death penalty in Oklahoma. But if we execute Richard Glossip, then I will fight to end the death penalty in Oklahoma, and I’ll do anything and everything I can, because we can’t have a process that allows for an innocent man to be executed.”

Above: The six peo­ple sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in the first phase of Oklahoma’s 2 ‑year exe­cu­tion spree. Top row, left to right: Richard Glossip, Scott Eizember, James Coddington. Bottom row, left to right: John Fitzgerald Hanson, Benjamin Cole, Richard Fairchild.

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[1] Url: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/oklahoma-court-schedules-25-executions-between-august-2022-and-december-2024

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