Oklahoma Execution Moratorium Bill Unanimously Passes Committee and Makes Its Way to the State-House Floor

On February 28, 2023, the Oklahoma House Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee unan­i­mous­ly passed a bill that would pause all pend­ing exe­cu­tions and pro­hib­it new death sen­tences while an inde­pen­dent task force reviews cur­rent Oklahoma death penal­ty pro­ce­dures. House Bill 3138, also known as the Death Penalty Moratorium Act, was intro­duced by Republican Representative Kevin McDugle and would cre­ate a five-mem­ber Death Penalty Reform Task Force to ​“study and report on the progress of imple­ment­ing reforms to the use of the death penal­ty in this state.” The task force would meet by November 2024, and sub­mit its find­ings in a report by November 2025. The bill calls for an exe­cu­tion mora­to­ri­um through November 2029, but Rep. McDugle said that he is will­ing to amend that date to 2026. Following the com­mit­tee vote, the bill is now eli­gi­ble to be debat­ed for a full vote on the House floor. Language in the bill allows it to take effect imme­di­ate­ly, should Governor Kevin Stitt sign it into law.

Rep. McDugle, who sup­ports the death penal­ty where evi­dence is clear, claims that the Oklahoma legal sys­tem has failed pris­on­ers with inno­cence claims. A sup­port­er of Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma death row pris­on­er whose case will be heard at the United States Supreme Court lat­er this year, Rep. McDugle told the com­mit­tee that ​“we can­not trust the sys­tem, peri­od, and I hate it,” he said. District attor­neys ​“are not will­ing to stand up and admit mis­takes and fix them. Instead, they want us all to believe that every­one that has gone through the sys­tem has had a fair and just tri­al,” said Rep. McDugle.

In April 2017, the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission released a report with 46 rec­om­men­da­tions for reform of the state’s death penal­ty. The com­mis­sion ​“iden­ti­fied dozens of impor­tant reforms aimed at pre­vent­ing wrong­ful cap­i­tal con­vic­tions and death sen­tences and reduc­ing the arbi­trari­ness that [it] found inher­ent in Oklahoma’s death penal­ty sys­tem,” read the report. Nearly sev­en years after the release of the commission’s report, none of these rec­om­mend­ed reforms have been imple­ment­ed. Rep. McDugle told his col­leagues that he ​“want[s the rec­om­men­da­tions] in the law.” He added that ​“we’ve got to take this report seriously.”

Rep. McDugle is joined by a group of Republicans who are also con­cerned with the death penal­ty process in Oklahoma. Adam Luck, senior advi­sor of Oklahoma Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, and for­mer chair­man of the Pardon and Parole Board, said that this coali­tion ​“agree[s] with Rep. McDugle that the time has come for Oklahomans to grap­ple with injus­tices we are wit­ness­ing with our state’s death penal­ty.” Mr. Luck added that ​“exe­cut­ing even one inno­cent per­son would be uncon­scionable, and the case of Richard Glossip alone should cause law­mak­ers to halt the process.”