Oklahoma Court Grants Attorney General’s Motion to Slow State’s Execution Spree

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) has reset the state’s exe­cu­tion sched­ule, slow­ing down the pace at which the 25-per­son exe­cu­tion spree it autho­rized in July 2022 would move forward. 

The order, issued January 24, 2023 in response to a motion filed by new­ly inau­gu­rat­ed Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (pic­tured) on January 17, resched­uled the exe­cu­tion dates of sev­en men who were to be put to death between February 16 and August 3, 2023. The court set new exe­cu­tion dates for the men between May 18, 2023 and June 6, 2024, start­ing with Richard Glossip, who now faces his ninth execution date.

The order throws into dis­ar­ray Oklahoma’s plan to exe­cute more than half of the state’s death row in a 29-month span between August 2022 and December 2024 — a pace unprece­dent­ed in Oklahoma state his­to­ry. Under the pri­or court-approved sched­ule, all but one of the eleven exe­cu­tions sched­uled for 2023 would be car­ried out with­in four weeks of the pre­ced­ing exe­cu­tion, a gru­el­ing pace Drummond argued was ​“unsus­tain­able in the long run.” 

Drummond filed his motion short­ly after wit­ness­ing the exe­cu­tion of Scott Eizember on January 12, 2023 — three days after he had been sworn in as attor­ney gen­er­al. The com­pressed exe­cu­tion sched­ule, he wrote, ​“is undu­ly bur­den­ing the DOC and its per­son­nel.” Drummond request­ed that the OCCA reset the exe­cu­tion dates with 60 days between the executions.

The OCCA acced­ed to Drummond’s request. Under the new sched­ule, four exe­cu­tion dates will be sched­uled for 2023 and anoth­er three for 2024. Richard Glossip’s exe­cu­tion date is post­poned from February 16 to May 18; Jemaine Cannon’s March 9 to July 20; Anthony Sanchez’s from April 6 to September 21; and Phillip Hancock’s from to May 4 to November 30. James Ryder’s exe­cu­tion date is resched­uled from June 1, 2023 to February 1, 2024; Michael Smith’s from July 6, 2023 to April 4, 2024; and Wade Lay’s from August 3, 2023 to June 6, 2024. 

The court said that the remain­ing sched­uled exe­cu­tions dates ​“have not been con­firmed” and that it would address those dates ​“at an appro­pri­ate time in the future.”