History of Misconduct Chronicled in Oklahoma County With 41 Executions

Oklahoma County has exe­cut­ed 41 pris­on­ers since 1976, the third high­est in the coun­try, and is among the 2% of American coun­ties respon­si­ble for 56% of the men and women cur­rent­ly on the nation’s death rows. A ThinkProgress report chron­i­cles the decades-long pat­tern of mis­con­duct com­mit­ted under its long-time District Attorney ​“Cowboy Bob” Macy (pic­tured).

Macy sent 54 peo­ple to death row dur­ing his 21 years as District Attorney, more than any oth­er pros­e­cu­tor in the U.S. in that peri­od. ​“Macy would pret­ty much do what­ev­er it took to win,” includ­ing mak­ing inflam­ma­to­ry argu­ments and rou­tine­ly with­hold­ing excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence, says David Autry, an Oklahoma County pub­lic defend­er from the Macy era. 

23 of the Macy cap­i­tal con­vic­tions relied heav­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of dis­graced police chemist Joyce Gilchrist, whom an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion in 2001 con­clud­ed had offered tes­ti­mo­ny ​“that went beyond the accept­able lim­its of sci­ence.” An inter­nal police inves­ti­ga­tion dis­cov­ered that evi­dence in many of Gilchrist’s major cas­es was miss­ing, along with three years of her blood analy­sis files. In the case of Curtis McCarty, one of three death-row exonerees pros­e­cut­ed under Macy, Gilchrist false­ly tes­ti­fied that hairs found at the crime scene matched McCarty’s and that his blood type matched the semen found on the vic­tim’s body. A lat­er inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that Gilchrist had altered her notes to impli­cate McCarty and that the hairs she had test­ed were miss­ing. McCarty was exon­er­at­ed in 2007 after inde­pen­dent DNA test­ing exclud­ed him as a sus­pect. Almost half of the 23 peo­ple who were sen­tenced to death in tri­als where Gilchrist tes­ti­fied were exe­cut­ed before their cas­es could be reviewed and ThinkProgress reports that as many as 38 of those Macy sent to death row have been executed.

Macy’s heavy reliance on the death penal­ty, and the mis­con­duct he over­saw, has come under renewed scruti­ny as nation­al atten­tion focus­es on the case of Richard Glossip, whom Macy pros­e­cut­ed. Glossip was con­vict­ed sole­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of Justin Sneed, who com­mit­ted the mur­der and claimed Glossip hired him to do it. Glossip was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on September 30, 2015, but his exe­cu­tion was stayed when prison offi­cials revealed they had pro­cured the wrong lethal injection drug. 

All exe­cu­tions in Oklahoma are now on hold, pend­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into the state’s lethal injection procedure.