Posted on 04/04/2024 11:17:33 AM PDT by Morgana
An Oklahoma man convicted in the murder of two people in Oklahoma City more than 20 years ago has been executed, marking the first death by capital punishment in the state this year.
Michael Dewayne Smith, 41, received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary on Thursday morning and was pronounced dead at 10:20 am, according to a spokesperson from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections..
Smith declined to request a final meal. Chief of Public Relations Kay Thompson told DailyMail.com that the inmate was provided canteen items and that he was a vegetarian.
The 41-year-old was convicted in the separate shooting deaths of Janet Moore, 41, and Sharath Pulluru, 22, in February 2002.
He is the first person executed in the state this year and the 12th since the state resumed capital punishment in 2021. This followed a nearly seven-year hiatus that came in response to a series of bungled executions.
During a clemency hearing last month, Smith apologized to the victims´ families while insisting that he was not responsible for their deaths.
'I didn't commit these crimes. I didn't kill these people,' Smith said. 'I was high on drugs. I don't even remember getting arrested.'
Before the hearing, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond requested that Smith be denied clemency.
Smith killed both victims as part of a 'double-murder spree simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time,' Drummond said.
The inmate shed tears during his 15-minute address to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board before he was denied clemency in a 4-1 vote.
After the first of three lethal drugs, midazolam, was administered on Thursday morning, Smith trembled and attempted to raise his head before his body slackened.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
IMO, neither intoxication nor insanity are legitimate defenses for crime. You can be intoxicated/insane AND guilty. This murderer received a just punishment for his heinous crime. He should have been executed 20 years ago.
I always liked the old method of execution-The electric chair. I often offered to turn my lights off to boost power!
I pray he got right with Jesus because the agony of spending eternity without the Love of God is a truly terrifying thought.
The good news for Dewayne is that by his standards he actually wasn’t executed, because he was so high he didn’t know he was dying.
Good riddance.
And a warning to others.
How did anyone come to the conclusion that electrical shock isn’t cruel or unusual way to kill someone. I’m all for nitrogen saturation, hanging, guillotine or firing squad. Then after they witnessed it still thought it was OK!
I would think that he died a less painful death than the two human beings he shot and killed.
Remember how no one blamed the gun for Kennedy’s assassination?
Was it the sentence or the execution of the sentence that was the issue?
I got the impression it was a “series of bungled executions” on some other death row inmate that compelled the state to put a moratorium on executions, a moratorium that lasted 7 years.
I personally do not understand this kind of thing. Why do they have to have some kind of stupid cocktail of drugs that are hard to get, have different effects on people, blah blah blah.
Here is what they should do. Have the person tied to a gurney. Wheel him into a very small, gas-tight room, close the door, and flood it with nitrogen. The person just passes out and asphyxiates.
Clean. Painless. Easy. Cheap. No screw ups.
I just don’t understand this. All I can gather is that these executions are configured this way to cause them to screw up and result in public outcries.
We don’t need to be cruel. But people need to take responsibility for their actions, which in the case of murder, means losing your own life as well.
Nitrogen works for me.
Not executing folks has more downside than executing them.
The State is just keeping him safe by killing his body so it won't betray him like that again.
I feel very strongly about it. It doesn’t mean we can’t be more diligent in ensuring that only the guilty are punished.
But murder must be punished.
I don’t know how diligent we should be. Or whether capital punishment is the appropriate punishment. However, whatever we decide, it should be administered.
We train dogs by using clear, consistent commands. Good parents have rules for their kids. They don’t let the kids play one against the other. We should be just as consistent with lawbreakers.
There ya go. Reversed applied logic.
Indeed. It was Oswald.All about Lee Harvey Oswald!, the press screamed.
No AR 15 around to blame, at least that I was aware if it was in 1963.
Nope. Different time, different place. Different America.
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