Oklahoma Death-Row Prisoner James Coddington Asks Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Parole to Commute Sentence

Lawyers for James Coddington (pic­tured), the first per­son sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed as part of Oklahoma’s two-year exe­cu­tion spree, are seek­ing clemen­cy for a man they say ​“exem­pli­fies the prin­ci­ples of redemp­tion.” In a peti­tion filed July 15, 2022, they ask the Oklahoma Pardons and Parole Board to com­mute Coddington’s death sen­tence to life with­out parole, describ­ing Coddington’s sin­cere remorse and exem­plary behav­ioral record on death row.

The peti­tion asks the Board to com­mute Coddington’s death sen­tence because of his good behav­ior through­out his near­ly two decades in prison and because he has shown pro­found remorse for the mur­der of his friend, Albert Hale. Federal Public Defender Emma Rolls, a lawyer on Coddington’s defense team, wrote: ​“If our soci­ety believes in the prin­ci­ple of redemp­tion, then James Coddington’s life must be spared.” 

The peti­tion states, that Coddington’s ​“sobri­ety, ser­vice, and com­pli­ance with rules of the soci­ety in which he lives are doc­u­ment­ed. The man the jury con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death no longer exists.” 

Rolls said that in all her years rep­re­sent­ing death-row pris­on­ers, ​“James Coddington is the most deeply and sin­cere­ly remorse­ful per­son I have ever rep­re­sent­ed.” Coddington’s clemen­cy efforts have also drawn sup­port from prison staff, notably for­mer Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Justin Jones. Jones wrote in an affi­davit that Coddington deserved com­mu­ta­tion because of his ​“com­mend­able record” and ​“sus­tained good conduct.”

Coddington is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on August 25, 2022, the first of 25 exe­cu­tion dates set by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on a near­ly one-a-month sched­ule from August 2022 to December 2024. Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor request­ed the exe­cu­tion dates just four days after U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Friot upheld Oklahoma’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col against a chal­lenge to its con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty. If car­ried out, the exe­cu­tion sched­ule would put to death 58% of all death-row pris­on­ers in the state. Coddington was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in March 2022, how­ev­er, in December 2021, Judge Friot grant­ed him a stay of exe­cu­tion pend­ing the out­come of the lethal-injection lawsuit.

The clemen­cy peti­tion also argues that com­mu­ta­tion is also appro­pri­ate based upon Coddington’s child­hood and the cir­cum­stances of the offense. It tells the sto­ry of Coddington’s child­hood defined by abject pover­ty, abuse, and addic­tion. Coddington assault­ed and killed a friend amid a drug binge in a men­tal state that, the peti­tion argues, made it impos­si­ble for him to form the req­ui­site intent for first degree mur­der. However, the peti­tion says, the jury nev­er heard crit­i­cal evi­dence regard­ing his men­tal state because the tri­al court exclud­ed expert eval­u­a­tions explain­ing Coddington’s drug-induced psy­chosis. On appeal, courts agreed that the exclu­sion of this evi­dence was con­sti­tu­tion­al error, but the fed­er­al courts deferred to state court rul­ings that the vio­la­tion was ulti­mate­ly ​“harm­less.”

The peti­tion argues that ​“the entire­ty of James’s life proves he is not the worst of the worst offend­ers.” It says that ​“evi­dence of the seed of innate good­ness James always pos­sessed is buried in the records of his hor­rif­ic child­hood. The fact that seed flour­ished on death row rein­forces the impor­tance of clemen­cy in the death penalty process.”

The Board will hear Coddington’s case on July 26. Coddington plans on tes­ti­fy­ing at the hearing.