Thanks to some new evidence of racial bias uncovered by the ABC documentary, death row-inmate Jones could get a new hearing from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA), which has now withdrawn a June order denying a defense attorney’s requests to look at evidence of racial bias by a jury, per The City Sentinel. The local archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church called for an end to capital punishment and asked parishioners to pray for Grant.ABC’s “The Last Defense” is living up to its name for subject Julius Jones. President Donald Trump, which resumed federal executions in 2020 after a 17-year hiatus, putting 13 prisoners to death. states and the District of Columbia have either abolished the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in the past 10 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks executions.Ĭonservative states including Texas and Missouri, however, have bucked that trend, as did the administration of Republican former U.S. states, where the use of capital punishment is declining. The planned executions run counter to trends in most U.S. They also argued that Oklahoma's newest lethal injection protocol is too similar to a prior method that led to the botched executions. Lawyers for Grant and five other condemned prisoners had argued that the state violated their right to religious liberty by asking them to name an acceptable method of execution, which the prisoners said forced them to participate in their own deaths. In ordering the state to delay the executions on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court had unfairly denied the two men delays granted to numerous other defendants challenging the lethal injection protocol.īut the Supreme Court on Thursday vacated that stay without commenting further on the case. He has maintained his innocence for two decades in a case that has attracted attention from celebrities and anti-death penalty activists. Jones, 41, was sentenced to death for murdering an insurance executive gunned down in his driveway. Supreme Court overturned a stay of execution for Grant and Julius Jones, who is scheduled to be put to death on Nov. She said he was a victim of brutality both at home and at the hands of Oklahoma's youth detention system, and did not receive appropriate mental health treatment before he murdered prison employee Gay Carter in 1998 while incarcerated for another crime. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections said that Grant's execution was carried out in accordance with its protocols and without complication.Īfter Grant died on Thursday, his lawyer, Sarah Jernigan, said he had tried to atone and understand his actions "more than any other client I have worked with." Grant had been a plaintiff in a lawsuit set to go to trial next year challenging the three-drug protocol as inhumane, but the state refused to postpone his execution to accommodate the case. "There should be no more executions in Oklahoma until we go to trial in February to address the state's problematic lethal injection protocol," Baich said. Vomit covered his face until a prison official wiped it off, Murphy said.ĭale Baich, one of the attorneys representing Grant, called Thursday's execution "problematic." "He began convulsing, about two dozen times, full body convulsions." "As the drugs began to flow, the first drug, midazolam, he exhaled deeply," Sean Murphy said in a news briefing posted online. The three-drug cocktail is meant to first render the recipient unconscious and unable to feel pain, followed by others that lead to death.īut a media witness said Grant convulsed two dozen times and vomited before dying. It was Oklahoma's first execution since three botched attempts - including one that was called off because the wrong drug had been supplied - led to a halt in 2015. Oct 28 (Reuters) - Condemned Oklahoma prisoner John Grant convulsed and vomited before dying from a cocktail of drugs on Thursday as the state conducted its first execution in years despite questions about its lethal injection protocol, a witness to the death reported.
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