Oklahoma Court Modifies Execution Scheduling Process, Granting Attorney General’s Request to Extend the Interval Between Executions But Choosing to Set Execution Dates Individually

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled on May 7 to extend the inter­val between exe­cu­tions to occur approx­i­mate­ly 90-days apart, spec­i­fy­ing that exe­cu­tions should be sched­uled for Thursdays, and that the Department of Corrections must be pro­vid­ed notice at least 35 days in advance. The Court also denied the Attorney General’s motion to set exe­cu­tion dates for groups of pris­on­ers, as has been done in the past, instead choos­ing to sched­ule executions individually. 

“Attorney General Drummond respects the Court’s rul­ing and will con­tin­ue to sup­port the fam­i­lies of vic­tims in every way pos­si­ble as they await jus­tice for their lost loved ones,” said Phil Bacharach, spokesper­son for the Attorney General. AG Drummond had cit­ed the last­ing emo­tion­al and men­tal trau­ma on cor­rec­tion­al staff as a rea­son to extend the exe­cu­tion inter­val from 60 days to 90 days. Shortly after tak­ing office in January 2023, AG Drummond had pre­vi­ous­ly request­ed the 30-day exe­cu­tion inter­val be extend­ed to 60-days, slow­ing down the pace of the 25 exe­cu­tions that had orig­i­nal­ly been sched­uled in July 2022. 

Although the judges were unan­i­mous in their deci­sion to for­go sched­ul­ing groups of pris­on­ers for exe­cu­tion, Judge Gary Lumpkin and Judge David Lewis dis­agreed with extend­ing the inter­val in between exe­cu­tions. Judge Lumpkin, who had pre­vi­ous­ly told DOC offi­cials to ​“suck it up” and ​“man up” dur­ing a March hear­ing, wrote that cor­rec­tion­al offi­cials could ​“meet the chal­lenges placed before them when prop­er lead­er­ship is pro­vid­ed.” In his opin­ion, he also high­light­ed that the courts should respect the legislature’s expe­dit­ed time­line. ​“Until the Legislature changes the pro­ce­dures, it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of each per­son involved in that process to per­form his or her duties in a time­ly man­ner. This is true whether it be judges, pros­e­cu­tors, or those charged with car­ry­ing out the judge­ment and sen­tence entered by the cit­i­zens who served on the juries in each of these cas­es,” wrote Judge Lumpkin. 

In July 2022, for­mer Attorney General John O’Connor asked the courts to sched­ule 25 exe­cu­tion dates start­ing in August 2022 through December 2024. The exe­cu­tions were set to take place in four phas­es of six exe­cu­tions each, plus an addi­tion­al 25^th exe­cu­tion. Within each phase, the exe­cu­tions were sched­uled at four-week inter­vals, fol­lowed by an exe­cu­tion-free month before the start of the next phase. Since then, eight of the 25 exe­cu­tions have been car­ried out. According to the local news sta­tion KOKH, 17 pris­on­ers on Oklahoma death row have exhaust­ed all appeals and are await­ing execution dates.