Former Oklahoma Governor and His Death Penalty Review Commission Co-Chair Call for Execution Halt

Former Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry (pic­tured) and for­mer U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester, who co-chaired the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission in 2017, have called on state offi­cials to halt the sched­uled exe­cu­tions of 25 death-row prisoners. 

In a guest col­umn in The Oklahoman on July 24, 2022, Gov. Henry, a Democrat, and Lester, a Republican, write that ​“All Oklahomans, regard­less of one’s stance on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, should insist on an unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to fair­ness and accu­ra­cy” in death penal­ty cas­es. Instead, they say, ​“the state is bar­rel­ing ahead with an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of exe­cu­tions despite the numer­ous flaws in the imple­men­ta­tion of the death penalty.”

The Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission was cre­at­ed in March 2016 dur­ing a pause in state exe­cu­tions in the wake of the botched 2014 and 2015 exe­cu­tions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner and the September 2015 near-exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip in which the state vio­lat­ed its own lethal injec­tion pro­to­col by obtain­ing an unau­tho­rized exe­cu­tion drug. The inde­pen­dent, bipar­ti­san com­mis­sion includ­ed for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, defense lawyers, judges, cit­i­zens, crime vic­tim advo­cates, and law pro­fes­sors, some of whom sup­port­ed the death penal­ty and some who opposed it. 

In a near­ly 300-page report that put for­ward 46 rec­om­men­da­tions for reform, the com­mis­sion exam­ined all aspects of Oklahoma’s death penal­ty. That review, Henry and Lester wrote, ​“left us with deep con­cerns about whether the state admin­is­ters cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in a way that ensures no inno­cent per­son will be executed.” 

The com­mis­sion ​“iden­ti­fied dozens of impor­tant reforms aimed at pre­vent­ing wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions and death sen­tences and reduc­ing the arbi­trari­ness that we found inher­ent in Oklahoma’s death penal­ty sys­tem,” Henry and Lester said, and con­vinced the com­mis­sion­ers that ​“no exe­cu­tions should take place unless and until these reforms were imple­ment­ed.” And yet, they note, ​“after five years, vir­tu­al­ly none of our rec­om­men­da­tions have been adopted.”

Most of the commission’s rec­om­men­da­tions, Henry and Lester write, were ​“sim­ple, straight­for­ward and easy to imple­ment.” Many addressed ​“the need for bet­ter train­ing, bet­ter edu­ca­tion and bet­ter pro­ce­dures for police, pros­e­cu­tors, judges and defense coun­sel in cap­i­tal cas­es.” Others con­cerned reten­tion of files, meth­ods of exe­cu­tion, and the clemency process.

No coun­ties out­side of Texas are respon­si­ble for more exe­cu­tions than Oklahoma and Tulsa coun­ties in Oklahoma and those coun­ties account for 17 of the 25 exe­cu­tions sched­uled to take place in the state between August 2022 and December 2024. DPIC’s 2022 pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al account­abil­i­ty project found that 30 death sen­tences imposed in Oklahoma have been reversed or pris­on­ers exon­er­at­ed because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. Eleven of those death sen­tences were imposed in Oklahoma County. 

Ten pris­on­ers who were wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death have been exon­er­at­ed from Oklahoma’s death row, while anoth­er eleven who were sen­tenced to death in Oklahoma County based on tes­ti­mo­ny by dis­graced police chemist Joyce Gilchrist were exe­cut­ed before her sys­temic mis­con­duct came to light. DPIC’s 2021 Special Report: The Innocence Epidemic found that only three coun­ties in the United States had more wrong­ly con­vict­ed death-row pris­on­ers exon­er­at­ed of mur­der than the five exon­er­at­ed from wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions in Oklahoma County.

An inde­pen­dent review of Richard Glossip’s case com­mis­sioned by the Oklahoma leg­is­la­ture pro­duced strong evi­dence of his like­ly inno­cence and revealed that Oklahoma County pros­e­cu­tors had ordered the destruc­tion of key evi­dence that could have sig­nif­i­cant­ly under­mined the state’s case against him. Glossip is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in September.

When the com­mis­sion released its report in 2017, Henry and Lester write, it made ​“one over­ar­ch­ing rec­om­men­da­tion: ​‘the Commission mem­bers unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend that the cur­rent mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty be extend­ed until sig­nif­i­cant reforms have been accom­plished.’” Nonetheless, Oklahoma resumed exe­cu­tions in 2021. ​“Before more exe­cu­tions occur,” Henry and Lester say, ​“it is high time to imple­ment the numer­ous nec­es­sary reforms to make cer­tain Oklahoma’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem is beyond reproach.”