An Oklahoma court on Friday set the execution dates for 25 prisoners sentenced to death and set a series of executions that would take place almost every month for the next two years.
Executions will begin in late August and last until December 2024. The 25 men sentenced to death have exhausted their appeals, but were temporarily saved in recent years as Oklahoma stopped administering the death penalty in 2015 due to erroneous executions.
Although the state began re-executing at the end of last year, it waited to set the execution dates for the 25 prisoners due to a lawsuit for one of the drugs used in lethal injections. . In June, a federal judge upheld the use of the drug, the sedative midazolam, finding that its use did not constitute a cruel and unusual punishment and paved the way for courts to begin setting execution dates.
If the executions occur as planned, Oklahoma will kill 10 prisoners a year in 2023 and 2024, the first time it has executed so many since 2003, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas executed 10 prisoners in 2018 and the federal government reached the same figure in 2020.
Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor asked the court to set dates for the inmates, all of whom were convicted of murder, and said Friday that relatives of the victims had long been waiting for justice.
“They are brave and inspiring in their continued expressions of love to those they lost,” Mr. O’Connor in a statement. “My office is by their side as they take the next step in the journey that the killers forced on them.”
Lawyers for the men sentenced to death said several of them have claims of innocence, including Richard Glossip, which is now scheduled for execution in September, the case of which has drawn widespread attention.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers commissioned a law firm to investigate Mr. Glossip, who was convicted of organizing the murder of a motel owner in 1997. The firm issued conclusions last month that said it proved another man was also convicted in the case. most likely he had acted alone, and that Mr. Glossip should not have been convicted.
State Rep. Kevin McDugle, a Republican, said that while he supported the death penalty, he would push for it to be outlawed if the state executed Mr. Glossip, who he believes is innocent.
“If we kill Richard Glossip, I will fight in this state to abolish the death penalty, simply because the process is not pure,” McDugle, who represents a district outside of Tulsa, said at a news conference last month. Friday said he kept his promise.
Lawyers for several of the other men sentenced to death say they suffer from serious mental illness or have tried to redeem themselves while in prison. The man who is scheduled to kill first, James A. Coddington, admitted at trial that he had killed a 73-year-old co-worker with a hammer in 1997 when co-worker Albert Hale did not lend him money. to buy drugs.
“There’s nothing I can do to make up for what I did,” Mr. Coddington in his 2003 trial, according to The Oklahoman.
But his lawyer, Emma Rolls, argues he should not receive the death penalty for his crime, and said Friday in a statement that Mr Coddington “embodies the principle of redemption.”
“James is the most deeply and sincerely remorseful client I have ever represented,” he said.
Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said in recent years it was unusual for a state to schedule so many executions at once.
“This is a return to a time when the United States felt very different about the death penalty than it does now,” he said, noting that Texas had executed an average of more than 30 people a year between 1997 and 2000.
The majority of Americans support the death penalty, although that support has declined significantly since the 1990s. In Oklahoma, voters passed an election measure in 2016 that enshrined the Constitution of the United States. ‘State the ability to execute the death penalty.