Oklahoma court sets 19 executions through Dec. 2024

Jul. 6—State appellate judges set execution dates for 19 more Oklahoma death row inmates — including at least one awaiting a competency trial — in a phased schedule through December 2024.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals set six execution dates last week before scheduling the rest of the 25 lethal injections of death row inmates in five phases through December 2024.

OCCA ordered Wade Lay to be the last inmate executed in Phase Two on Aug. 3, 2023.

Lay was set to be the first inmate of 2022 executed in America before a southeast Oklahoma district judge ordered a stay in December 2021 and defense attorneys and prosecutors agreed to a May 2023 date for a competency trial.

He was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2004 shooting death of Tulsa-area bank security guard Kenneth Anderson.

Lay was among 25 death row inmates for which an execution date was requested in June by the Oklahoma Attorney General's Office, which requested Lay's date be scheduled on a date after the trial.

The competency trial comes after District 18 District Judge Tim Mills ruled in December 2021 that "there is good reason to believe" Lay was not competent to be executed.

Mills also ruled that Oklahoma State Penitentiary Warden Jim Farris "abused his discretion in failing to call such fact to the attention of the District Attorney of Pittsburg County" and ordered the warden to notify the DA whose office "must immediately file" a petition stating Lay's conviction, judgment, and that his sanity is in question.

OCCA upheld Mills' order in March after the AG's Office appealed the ruling.

The court set execution dates last week for the James Coddington, Richard Glossip, Benjamin Cole, Richard Fairchild, John Hanson and Scott Eizember — starting Aug. 25 with Coddington and Sept. 22 with Glossip.

Glossip was convicted twice of first-degree murder in a 1997 murder-for-hire plot. He was hours away from being put to death by lethal injection in September 2015, when a stay was issued because prison officials had the incorrect drugs.

An investigation later revealed Oklahoma also previously used the incorrect mixture in a lethal injection and a series of troubled ones led to a moratorium.

Oklahoma resumed executions in October and again faced scrutiny after John Grant convulsed and vomited from the gurney before prison officials declared his lethal injection "went without complications."

Glossip's case has received international attention and his attorneys disagree with the execution scheduling after results of an independent review. The investigation came at the request of an ad hoc committee comprised of 34 Oklahoma state lawmakers, including 28 Republicans and led by State Rep. Kevin McDugle — who said he would fight to end the death penalty in the state if Glossip is executed.

In the scheduling of the executions, the Appeals Court followed recommendations from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

Oklahoma prisons officials asked for execution dates be scheduled on a Thursday and no less than four weeks apart.

Documents state prison officials asked for the first scheduled execution to be scheduled no earlier than Aug. 25 and with at least 35 days' notice in order for the agency to prepare and for clemency hearings to be hosted by the state's Pardon and Parole Board.

"By the state's calculations, therefore, it will be necessary to schedule some executions more than four weeks apart," the filing states. "However, the state respectfully asks that — for the sake of the victims' families, many of whom have waited decades — as many executions possible are set four weeks apart."

The Appeals Court wrote in its order that due to the sheer number of volume of cases and to ensure "constitutional requirements" made it necessary to establish a schedule that offers "flexibility" and allows the court to respond to unforeseen contingencies.

"An open month will separate each phase of the execution schedule to accommodate rescheduling if needed," the Appeals Court wrote. "This court will adjust the executions schedule as needed to ensure that executions progress in a timely and orderly manner."