The 10th Execution of 2022
Oklahoma executed James Coddington on August 25, 2022 for a 1997 killing, despite a recommendation from the state’s Pardon and Parole Board that his life be spared, reported The Associated Press.
Coddington, 50, received a lethal injection at
the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was pronounced dead at 10:16
a.m. Gov. Kevin Stitt declined to commute Coddington’s sentence to life in
prison without parole and rejected
his petition for clemency. Coddington was the fifth Oklahoma inmate to be
put to death since the state resumed executions last year.
“To all my family and friends, lawyers, everyone
who’s been around me and loved me, thank you,” Coddington said while strapped
to a gurney inside the death chamber. “Gov. Stitt, I don’t blame you and I
forgive you.”
After delivering his last words, Coddington lifted
his head and flashed a thumbs up to his attorney, Emma Rolls, who cried quietly
in the witness room.
After the first drug, midazolam, was administered,
Coddington’s breathing became labored and his chest hitched several times. A doctor
on the execution team declared him unconscious at 10:08 a.m., and Coddington
could be heard snoring inside the chamber.
Coddington was convicted and sentenced to die for
beating 73-year-old Albert Hale to death with a hammer. Prosecutors say
Coddington, then 24, became enraged when Hale refused to give him money to buy
cocaine.
During a clemency
hearing this month before the state’s five-member Pardon and Parole
Board, an emotional Coddington apologized to Hale’s family and said he was a
different man today.
But Mitch Hale, Albert Hale’s son who witnessed the
execution, said he didn’t believe Coddington was sincerely remorseful, noting
that he never mentioned his father or the Hale family during his last words.
“He proved today it wasn’t genuine. He never
apologized,” Hale said. “He didn’t bring up my dad.”
Hale added: “I forgive him, but that doesn’t release
him from the consequences of his actions.”
Rolls, Coddington’s attorney, said during the
clemency hearing that Coddington was impaired by years of alcohol and drug
abuse that began as an infant when his father put beer and whiskey into his
baby bottles.
Coddington was twice sentenced to death for Hale’s
killing, the second time in 2008 after his initial sentence was overturned on
appeal.
After killing Hale, Coddington committed at least
six armed robberies at gas stations and convenience stores across Oklahoma
City.
“When the full circumstances of the murder, related
robberies, and extensive history of violence on Mr. Coddington’s part are
considered, one thing is clear: death is the only just punishment for him,”
prosecutors in the state attorney general’s office wrote to the Pardon and Parole
Board.
The state had halted executions in September 2015
when prison officials realized they had received
the wrong lethal drug. It later came to light that the
same wrong drug had been used to execute an inmate, and executions in
the state were put on hold.
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