An Oklahoma court on Friday set execution dates for 25 death row inmates, setting a series of executions to take place nearly every month for the next two years.
Executions are scheduled to begin in late August and run through December 2024. All 25 men on death row have exhausted their appeals, but they were temporarily spared in recent years since Oklahoma suspended the death penalty in 2015. due to failed executions.
Although the state resumed executions late last year, it waited to set execution dates for the 25 inmates because of a lawsuit over 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 cruel and unusual punishment and clearing the way for courts to begin setting execution dates.
If executions go ahead as scheduled, Oklahoma will execute 10 inmates a year in 2023 and 2024, the first time it has executed that many since 2003, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Texas executed 10 inmates in 2018, and the federal government hit the same number 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 family members of the victims have been waiting a long time for justice.
“They are brave and inspiring in their continued expressions of love for those they have lost,” Mr O’Connor said in a statement. “My office stands by them as they take this next step in the journey that their killers have forced upon them.”
Lawyers for the men on death row said several of them have claims of innocence, including Richard Glossip, scheduled for execution in September, whose case has drawn widespread attention.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers commissioned a law firm to investigate the case of Mr. Glossip, who was convicted of settling the slaying of a motel owner in 1997. The firm released findings last month that indicated another man was also convicted in the case -probably acted alone and that Mr. Glossip should not have been convicted.
State Representative Kevin McDougall, a Republican, said that although he supported the death penalty, he would push to ban it if the state executed Mr. Glossip, who he said was innocent.
“If we put Richard Glossip to death, I will fight in this state to abolish the death penalty, simply because the process is not clean,” Mr. McDougall, who represents a district outside Tulsa, said at a news conference last month. On Friday, he said he was keeping his promise.
Lawyers for several of the other men on death row say they suffer from severe mental illness or have tried to redeem themselves while in prison. The man to be killed first, James A. Coddington, admitted at trial that he killed a 73-year-old co-worker with a hammer in 1997 when co-worker Albert Hale refused to lend him money to buy drugs.
“There’s nothing I can do to make up for what I did,” Mr. Coddington said at the trial in 2003, according to The Oklahoman.
But his lawyer Emma Rawls argued he should not receive the death penalty for his crime and said in a statement on Friday that Mr Coddington “epitomizes the principle of redemption”.
“James is the most deeply and genuinely remorseful client I have ever represented,” she said.
Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said it was unusual in recent years for a state to schedule so many executions at once.
“It’s a throwback to a time when the United States felt much differently about the death penalty than it does now,” he said, noting that Texas executed an average of more than 30 people a year between 1997 and 2000.
Most Americans support the death penalty, although that support has declined significantly since the 1990s. In Oklahoma, voters approved a ballot measure in 2016 that enshrined in the state constitution the ability to carry out the death penalty.
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