The 14th and 15th Executions of 2023
ALABAMA
Alabama executed a man on Friday for the 2001 beating
death of a woman as the state resumed lethal injections after two failed
executions prompted the governor to order an internal review of procedures, reported Newser.
James Barber, 64, was pronounced dead at 1:56am after receiving a lethal
injection at a south Alabama prison. Barber was convicted and sentenced to
death for the 2001 beating death of 75-year-old Dorothy Epps. Prosecutors said
Barber, a handyman, confessed to killing Epps with a claw hammer and fleeing
with her purse. Jurors voted 11-1 to recommend a death sentence, which a judge
imposed. Before he was put to death, Barber told his family he loved them and
apologized to Epps' family, the AP reports.
It was the first execution carried out in Alabama this
year after the state halted executions last fall. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey announced
a pause on executions in November to conduct an internal review of procedures.
The move came after the state halted two lethal injections because of
difficulties inserting IVs into the condemned men's veins, and Barber said
this week that he felt "trepidation." Barber's attorneys
unsuccessfully asked the courts to block the execution, saying the state has a
pattern of failing "to carry out a lethal injection execution in a
constitutional manner." The Supreme Court denied Barber's request for a
stay without comment.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent from the
decision that was joined by Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown
Jackson. She said the court was allowing "Alabama to experiment again with
a human life." "The Court should not allow Alabama to test the
efficacy of its internal review by using Barber as its 'guinea pig.'"
Sotomayor wrote. Barber's execution came hours after Oklahoma executed Jemaine
Cannon, 51, for stabbing a Tulsa woman, 20-year-old mother of two Sharonda
Clark, to death with a butcher knife in 1995 after his escape from a prison
work center. It was the state's second execution this year, the AP reports.
Oklahoma executed a man Thursday for stabbing a Tulsa
woman to death with a butcher knife in 1995 after his escape from a prison work
center.
Jemaine Cannon, 51, received a lethal injection at
10:01 a.m. and was pronounced dead 12 minutes later at the Oklahoma State
Penitentiary in McAlester. It was the second execution in Oklahoma this year and the ninth
since the state resumed lethal injections in 2021.
Cannon was convicted of killing 20-year-old Sharonda
Clark, a mother of two with whom Cannon had been living at an apartment in
Tulsa after his escape weeks earlier from a prison work center in southwest
Oklahoma. Cannon had been serving a 15-year sentence for the violent assault of
another woman who suffered permanent injuries after prosecutors say Cannon
raped her and beat her viciously with a claw hammer, iron and kitchen toaster.
A federal appeals court late Wednesday denied Cannon’s
last-minute appeal seeking a stay of execution in which Cannon claimed, among
other things, that he was Native American and not subject to Oklahoma
jurisdiction. Asked if he had any last words, Cannon said: “Yes, I confess with
my mouth and believe in my heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. Therefore
I am saved. Thank you.”
Cannon was executed on the same day that Alabama planned to execute James Barber for the 2001
beating death of a woman. It would be Alabama’s first lethal injection after a
pause in executions following a string of problems with inserting the IVs.
OKLAHOMA
Jemaine Cannon was executed on July 20, 2023 in Alabama. The victim's eldest
daughter, Yeh-Sehn White, and Sharonda Clark’s sister, Shaya Duncan, witnessed Cannon’s
execution and described it as peaceful, reported The Associated Press.
“In my opinion, he died in a very favorable way,”
White said. “Unfortunately my mom did not have that opportunity.”
Cannon claimed at a clemency hearing before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board last
month that he killed Clark in self-defense.
“I am deeply disheartened that the act of defending my
life and the acts that she initiated against me ever happened,” Cannon told the
board via a video feed from the state penitentiary.
Cannon’s attorney, Mark Henricksen, also told the
panel that Cannon’s trial and appellate attorneys were ineffective for not
presenting evidence to support that claim. His trial attorneys presented no
witnesses or exhibits and rested after prosecutors presented their case,
Henricksen said.
In a statement sent to The Associated Press this week,
Henricksen said the state’s decision to proceed with Cannon’s execution
amounted to “historic barbarism.”
“Mr. Cannon has endured abuse and neglect for fifty
years by those charged with his care,” Henricksen said. “He sits in his cell a
model prisoner. He is nearly deaf, blind, and nearing death by natural causes.
The decision to proceed with this particular execution is obscene.”
But White and prosecutors from the attorney general’s
office urged the state to execute Cannon, and the board rejected clemency on a
3-2 vote..
Oklahoma uses a three-drug lethal injection protocol beginning with
the sedative midazolam, followed by the paralytic vecuronium bromide and
finally potassium chloride, which stops the heart. The state had one of the
nation’s busiest death chambers until problems in 2014 and 2015 led to a de facto
moratorium.
Richard Glossip was just hours from being executed in September 2015 when
prison officials realized they received the wrong lethal drug. It was later
learned that the same wrong drug had been used to execute an inmate in January 2015.
The drug mix-ups followed a botched execution in April 2014 in which inmate
Clayton Lockett struggled on a gurney before dying 43 minutes into his lethal
injection — and after the state’s prisons chief ordered executioners to stop.
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