Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has rejected a plea for clemency from James Coddington, who was sentenced to death. The Republican politician on Wednesday defied the Oklahoma Parole Board’s recommendation that the 50-year-old’s sentence be commuted to life imprisonment.
Coddington, convicted of robbery and murder, is scheduled to be executed Thursday at the McAlester prison in Oklahoma. From August 2022 to the end of 2024, 25 executions are scheduled in Oklahoma.
Attorney General John O’Connor believes speedy executions are a matter of justice for families of murder victims. Oklahoma’s plan bucks the nationwide trend of declining executions.
In 2021, executioners killed 11 people across the United States, two of them in Oklahoma. So far in 2022, nine death sentences have been carried out, again two of them in Oklahoma.
Previously, Oklahoma had temporarily stopped carrying out death sentences after two executions in 2014 and 2015, in which those sentenced suffered particular agony. According to media reports, in April 2014 the convict Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the start of the execution. In January 2015, during the execution, convict Charles Warner said, “My body is on fire.”
Stitt did not explain his decision against Coddington. His office said the governor had fully reviewed the clemency request. In 1997, Coddington killed his co-worker Albert Hale during a drug money dispute.
At the live-streamed clemency committee hearing in early August, Coddington expressed deep regret. He is now a different person and he has found God.
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Oklahoma City, Paul Coakley, spoke out in favor of a pardon. The death penalty is immoral.
The state in the Midwest with four million inhabitants is considered one of the most conservative states. Democrat Joe Biden received 32 percent of the vote in Oklahoma’s 2020 presidential election. Republican Stitt, a former financial entrepreneur, has ruled since 2019.
