Article of Interest: Former U.S. Judge Andy Lester Calls on Oklahoma to Implement Reforms to ​“Badly Broken” Capital Punishment System Before Continuing Executions

“From start to fin­ish, it is so bad­ly bro­ken that we can­not know whether some­one who has been con­demned to death is actu­al­ly deserv­ing of the ulti­mate penal­ty,” wrote for­mer U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester in a September 12, 2024 op-ed for The Oklahoman. Before car­ry­ing out any new exe­cu­tions, Mr. Lester calls on the state to imple­ment new reforms to its ​“bro­ken” cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. Although the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission pro­vid­ed 45 spe­cif­ic rec­om­men­da­tions and one gen­er­al rec­om­men­da­tion in its 300-page report released in 2017, almost none have been imple­ment­ed. Despite the Commission’s unan­i­mous rec­om­men­da­tion that exe­cu­tions should not resume until sig­nif­i­cant reforms occur, the mora­to­ri­um in place at the time was lifted. 

Mr. Lester high­lights the fal­li­bil­i­ty of the cur­rent sys­tem in the case of Emmanuel Littlejohn, who is the next death row pris­on­er sched­uled for exe­cu­tion. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recent­ly rec­om­mend­ed clemen­cy for Mr. Littlejohn, whose exe­cu­tion is cur­rent­ly sched­uled for September 26, but the final deci­sion now rests with Governor Kevin Stitt, who has only grant­ed clemen­cy once dur­ing his 5‑year tenure. ​“Oklahomans cer­tain­ly agree that, before we exe­cute some­one, we must know for cer­tain that per­son deserves the death penal­ty. We can­not know that in this case. When Gov. Stitt reviews Littlejohn’s case, let’s hope he strong­ly con­sid­ers the Parole Board’s rec­om­men­da­tion,” con­clud­ed Mr. Lester.