The US state of Oklahoma has carried out its first execution for 2024, giving a lethal injection to a man convicted of a double murder.
An inmate on death row, Michael DeWayne Smith, convicted of shooting and killing two people separately in Oklahoma City more than two decades ago was executed Thursday morning.
Janet Moore was killed when he went to her house looking for her son, who Smith believed to be a police informant.
In a separate attack, Sarath Babu Pulluru was killed when Smith mistook him for another convenience store clerk who had made comments to a local newspaper about Smith’s criminal gang.
Smith’s attorney, Mark Henricksen, argued that Smith was intellectually disabled, a condition worsened by years of heavy drug use, and that his life should have been spared and he should have been allowed to spend the rest of his life in prison. Henricksen said Smith was in a PCP-induced haze when he confessed to police and that key elements of his confession aren’t supported by facts.
„I didn’t commit these crimes. I didn’t kill these people,” Smith told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, which voted 4-1 to deny him clemency. „I was high on drugs. I don’t even remember getting arrested,” Smith said, at several points breaking down into tears.
Regardless, Smith died within minutes of receiving the lethal cocktail of three drugs, according to reporters who witnessed it at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
When asked if he had any last words, Smith, 41, said: „Nah, I’m good.”
He is the 12th person to be executed in Oklahoma since the state resumed carrying out death penalties in 2021, after a 7-year pause resulting from complications during executions.
In 2014, a condemned prisoner writhed in apparent pain for 43 minutes before dying from a heart attack. The next year, a prisoner being executed told witnesses „it feels like acid” and „my body is on fire”.
The family of Janet Moore released a statement declaring that „justice has been served” and thanking authorities for pursuing the punishment over the past 22 years.
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