Oklahoma Parole Board plans clemency hearings for six inmates

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Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board announced the upcoming clemency hearings for six inmates.

At the request of sitting-duck Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor, Oklahoma will begin resuming executions for the 25 inmates who have exhausted their options for appeals and are eligible for execution.

The executions are scheduled to begin on Aug 25, with one happening every four weeks.

Attorney General O’Connor wrote “For the sake of the victims’ families, many of whom have waited for decades — as many executions as possible are set four weeks apart.”

Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board: Clemency Hearings for Six Inmates

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board released the schedule for six clemency hearings, with the first on July 26.

The first clemency hearing will be for James Coddington, who was convicted for the 1997 killing of Albert Hale. If denied clemency, the state will execute Coddington on Aug 25. 

Following Coddington will be Richard Glossip, who was initially scheduled to be executed in 2015 when prison officials realized they had received the wrong drugs for their “three-drug lethal cocktail,” hours before the execution.

The almost botched execution led then-Governor Mary Fallin to put a moratorium on executions in Oklahoma which has since been lifted by current Governor Kevin Stitt.  

Oklahoma’s execution protocol was challenged in court for breaking inmates’ constitutional right of not receiving cruel and unusual punishment, after the botched executions of Clayton Lockett and John Grant.

Yet Judge Stephen Friot, a federal judge in Oklahoma, ruled last month that the state’s method of lethal injection using a combination of three drugs is constitutional.

He wrote, “The prerequisites of a successful lethal injection challenge under the Eighth Amendment have been made clear by the Supreme Court. The plaintiff inmates have fallen well short of clearing the bar set by the Supreme Court.”

In Oklahoma, out of the total 44 detainees on death row, over 40% of death row detainees are Black. Oklahoma’s population of Black citizens is 7.8%.