The 9th and 10th Executions of 2025
Oklahoma carried out its first execution of 2025 on March
20, 2025, giving a lethal injection to a Wendell Arden Grissom a confessed
killer who had said in his first interview with police that he wanted the death
penalty, reported The Daily Oklahoman.
Also on March 20, 2025, Florida officials executed Edward
James for the killing of an 8-year-old girl and her grandmother on a night in
which he drank heavily and used drugs, according to The Associated Press.
Grissom, 56, was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. at the
Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
"I consider this a mercy. It's going to be all
right," he said in his last words after apologizing and asking for
forgiveness from "all of you that I hurt."
He did not seek any emergency stays in court and did not
speak at his
clemency hearing in February. He told Newsweek on Monday, "I
don't want to spend the rest of my life in here."
Grissom was executed for fatally shooting a woman during a
2005 home invasion in rural Blaine County. The victim, Amber Dawn Matthews, 23,
was at the isolated home near Watonga helping a friend, Dreu Kopf, pack for a
move the next day.
Matthews was shot the first time in the back of the head
while holding her friend's newborn baby, Gracie. She was shot again in the
forehead after collapsing to the floor. Kopf also was shot but survived.
"You guys really need to remember her because she was
unbelievable," Kopf said Thursday of her best friend. "She saved my
kids."
Florida Prison officials said James, 63, was pronounced dead
at 8:15 p.m. after receiving a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison
near Starke. He drew the death penalty after pleading guilty to the Sept. 19,
1993, killings of Toni Neuner, 8, and her grandmother, Betty Dick, 58.
As he awaited the injection, James said he did not wish to
give a final statement. Then, as the drugs were administered, James breathed
heavily, his arms flinching, and then he was still.
Jared Pearson, Neuner’s brother, said afterward that the
family was able to find some kind of peace with the process.
“But we lost generations because of him,” Pearson said.
“It’s all pure evil. That night was horrific.”
Three other executions were carried out this week in the
U.S., including the lethal
injection earlier Thursday of an Oklahoma man for the fatal shooting
of a woman during a home invasion. Arizona executed a
man by an injection Wednesday and Louisiana used
nitrogen gas for the first time Tuesday, putting a man to death as
that state ended a 15-year pause on executions.
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