JTFMax:
The US state of Oklahoma shows no mercy!
Gov. Kevin Stitt has denied clemency for James Coddington, who was sentenced to death. The Republican politician on Wednesday (local time) ignored the recommendation of the official Oklahoma parole board to commute the 50-year-old's sentence to life imprisonment.
Coddington, convicted of robbery, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection Thursday at the McAlester prison in Oklahoma. From August 2022 to the end of 2024, 25 executions are scheduled in Oklahoma. Attorney General John O'Connor believes speedy executions are a matter of justice for families of murder victims.
Oklahoma's plan bucks the nationwide trend of declining executions. In 2021, executioners killed 11 people across the United States, two of them in Oklahoma. So far in 2022, nine death sentences have been carried out, again two of them in Oklahoma.
Previously, Oklahoma had temporarily stopped carrying out death sentences after two executions in 2014 and 2015, in which those sentenced suffered particular agony. In April 2014, according to media reports, the convict Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the start of the execution. In January 2015, during the execution, convict Charles Warner said, "My body is on fire."
Stitt did not explain his decision against Coddington. His office said the governor had thoroughly reviewed the clemency request. In 1997, Coddington killed his co-worker Albert Hale with a hammer during a dispute over drug money.
At the live-streamed clemency committee hearing in early August, Coddington expressed deep regret. He is now a different person, and he has found God. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City, Paul Coakley, spoke out in favor of a pardon. The death penalty is immoral.
The state in the Midwest, with four million inhabitants, is considered one of the most conservative states. Democrat Joe Biden received 32 percent of the vote in Oklahoma's 2020 presidential election. Republican Stitt, a former financial entrepreneur, has ruled since 2019.
He has signed a liberal firearms law and, in May 2022, a strict ban on abortion. Human life begins at conception, Stitt explained and must be protected.
