The Oklahoma Attorney General has asked the state Supreme Court of Appeals to set execution dates for 25 death row inmates after a federal judge rejected their challenge against the state’s deadly injection method. In 25 similar testimonies in the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeal on Friday, Attorney General John O’Connor wrote that the federal court’s suspension is no longer valid and that there are no longer any legal impediments to the execution of detainees who have been exhausted. their appeals. The State Department of Corrections has requested that the first execution be scheduled no earlier than August 25, O’Connor wrote. He asked for the dates to be set at four-week intervals because of the time required for a leniency hearing for each detainee prior to execution, and that the DOC requested that executions be scheduled at least 35 days after the court order. “For the sake of the families of the victims, many of whom have been waiting for decades – as many executions as possible four weeks apart,” O’Connor wrote. O’Connor suggested that the first inmate to be executed was James Coddington, whose execution was postponed to March 10 after U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot allowed him to attend a trial that ultimately failed. A phone call to the office of a Coddington lawyer rang unanswered on Saturday. Defense attorneys have previously stated that Coddington has a mental illness. Coddington was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of his colleague Albert Hale in Choctaw, who prosecutors say had refused to lend Coddington $ 50 to buy drugs. Second on the list, which according to the testimony was proposed based on when each detainee’s appeal was exhausted, would be Richard Glossip, the main plaintiff in the federal lawsuit. It was a few hours after his execution in September 2015, when prison officials realized they had received the wrong lethal drug. It was later learned that the same wrong drug had been used in the past to execute a detainee and state executions were put on hold. Glossip, who has been convicted twice and sentenced to death for the murder of Barry Van Tris, the owner of Glossip’s motel, has maintained his innocence. Don Knight, Glossip’s lawyer, said a group of Republican lawmakers challenging Glossip’s guilt had called for a review. “These findings could reveal exculpatory information that was previously unknown,” Knight said in a statement. “Until everyone has the opportunity to review the final report, the Attorney General has a moral duty to delay the execution of Richard Glossip.” Executions in Oklahoma resumed in October with John Grant breaking into a garage and vomiting before being pronounced dead. Since then, three more executions have taken place without significant complications, most recently inmate Gilbert Ray Postelle, who was killed on February 17. Federal Public Defender Jennifer Moreno, one of the lawyers who represented the detainees in the failed federal trial, said the appeal against Friot’s decision was being considered. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
