Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board Denies Clemency to Death-Row Prisoner Who Experienced Significant Abuse From Family and State Actors

A divid­ed Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has denied the clemen­cy peti­tion filed on behalf of death-row pris­on­er John Marion Grant, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on October 28, 2021. The 3 – 2 vote on October 5, 2021 — with Board mem­bers Adam Luck and Kelly Doyle vot­ing in favor of clemen­cy and mem­bers Richard Smothermon, Scott Williams, and Larry Morris vot­ing to let the exe­cu­tion pro­ceed — paves the way for the state’s first exe­cu­tion in more than six years, fol­low­ing a series of botched exe­cu­tions in 2014 and 2015. 

Grant’s lawyers implored the Board to rec­om­mend that Governor Kevin Stitt com­mute his death sen­tence to life with­out parole, say­ing that because of incom­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion, Grant’s jury nev­er heard crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the neglect and phys­i­cal and sex­u­al vio­lence he endured in a home riv­en by abuse and abject pover­ty and in a noto­ri­ous state juve­nile facil­i­ty. In a state­ment released after the vote, Grant’s clemen­cy lawyer, Sarah Jernigan char­ac­ter­ized the deci­sion as the cul­mi­na­tion of insti­tu­tion­al fail­ures in Grant’s life. 

“John Grant nev­er had a chance,” Jernigan said. ​“His moth­er neglect­ed and aban­doned him. Beginning when he was just twelve years old, the State of Oklahoma sent him to noto­ri­ous­ly vicious juve­nile facil­i­ties where he expe­ri­enced unspeak­able hor­rors. At sev­en­teen, Oklahoma placed him in an adult prison, where he was fur­ther vic­tim­ized, and where he nev­er received the men­tal health care he so obvi­ous­ly need­ed. And when he even­tu­al­ly com­mit­ted a trag­ic crime, Oklahoma pro­vid­ed him with incom­pe­tent lawyers, who failed to give the jurors infor­ma­tion some of them now say might have changed their deci­sion. Allowing Mr. Grant to be exe­cut­ed is a final injus­tice in this tragic case.”

Grant was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2000 for the mur­der of a prison cafe­te­ria work­er he com­mit­ted while incar­cer­at­ed for a rob­bery com­mit­ted when he was a teenag­er. The Oklahoma Attorney General’s office argued to the Board that the nature of his crime indi­cat­ed that he would pose a dan­ger in the prison set­ting if his death sen­tence were commuted.

Grant’s clemen­cy peti­tion detailed evi­dence of chron­ic abuse and trau­ma in an abject­ly impov­er­ished house­hold that was nev­er pre­sent­ed at his tri­al. Grant, the peti­tion said, was one of nine chil­dren of a drug-addict­ed sin­gle moth­er who beat the chil­dren — some­times unex­pect­ed­ly in the mid­dle of the night — with exten­sion cords, tracks for hot wheel cars, and switch­es. At age 9, his lawyers wrote, Grant had begun steal­ing food and cloth­ing in an attempt to pro­vide for his sib­lings. According to records his lawyers sub­mit­ted to the Board, Grant was com­mit­ted at age 12 to an Oklahoma juve­nile facil­i­ty in which “[w]hippings, rapes, and assaults were rou­tine­ly inflict­ed on the chil­dren.” The juve­nile facil­i­ties in which he was con­fined were col­lec­tive­ly known as the Oklahoma Shame and were lat­er the sub­ject of a scathing inves­tiga­tive report by the Gannett News Service. The Gannett reports told ​“the sto­ry of a polit­i­cal sys­tem so huge and pow­er­ful that it could con­done such abuse, hide it from the pub­lic eye, and still cling to life.” 

“[T]he years Mr. Grant spent at these State-run juve­nile homes,” his peti­tion said, ​“were at the very height of this abuse.” Documents from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections report­ed that Grant had ​“scars all over [his] body” — like­ly, his lawyers wrote, the result of beat­ings he endured as a child from his moth­er and from the juvenile facility. 

Grant’s state-appoint­ed lawyers — one of whom was lat­er sus­pend­ed for unpro­fes­sion­al con­duct com­mit­ted dur­ing the peri­od in which he was rep­re­sent­ing Grant — failed to inves­ti­gate or present this evi­dence. That fail­ure, his lawyers said, had grave con­se­quences in his case: at least two jurors indi­cat­ed that if they had known the details of Grant’s life his­to­ry and the abuse he endured as a child, their sen­tenc­ing ver­dict might have been different.

Grant’s clemen­cy peti­tion argued that the par­don board should put an end to a con­tin­u­ous his­to­ry of insti­tu­tion­al fail­ures by rec­om­mend­ing to Governor Stitt that Grant’s death sen­tence be com­mut­ed. ​“The State should have been a fail-safe when Mr. Grant’s moth­er was unable or unwill­ing to pro­vide the sta­bil­i­ty and care to Mr. Grant that is essen­tial to every child,” Grant’s lawyers argued. ​“The State should have been a fail-safe in pro­vid­ing Mr. Grant with the men­tal health care and resources need­ed for so many of its inmate pop­u­la­tion. The State should have been a fail-safe in pro­vid­ing com­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion to Mr. Grant once the years of abuse and dys­func­tion man­i­fest­ed in bad acts. Yet the State neglect­ed – more accu­rate­ly, abused – its duty to pro­tect and rehabilitate.”

Grant’s exe­cu­tion would be the first exe­cu­tion in the state since its 45-minute botched lethal-injec­tion exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in 2014 and its exe­cu­tion of Charles Warner in 2015 using an unau­tho­rized exe­cu­tion drug. Executions were halt­ed in the state after the abort­ed attempt to exe­cute Richard Glossip in September 2015, when the state again obtained the wrong execution drug.

A fed­er­al judge has sched­uled a tri­al on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, which is sched­uled to begin ear­ly in 2022. The Oklahoma Attorney General’s office sought — and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals issued — sev­en death war­rants, despite the pen­den­cy of that tri­al. Grant’s would be the first of those executions.