Posted on 08/25/2022 11:26:59 AM PDT by Morgana
Oklahoma executed a man on death throw on Thursday for a 1997 killing, despite a recommendation from the state's Pardon and Parole Board that his life be spared.
James Coddington, 50, received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was pronounced dead at 10.16 a.m. Governor Kevin Stitt declined to commute Coddington's sentence to life in prison without parole and rejected his petition for clemency.
Coddington was the fifth Oklahoma inmate to have been put to death since the state resumed executions last year.
He was originally convicted and sentenced to die for beating his friend and coworker 73-year-old Albert Hale to death with a hammer inside Hale's Choctaw home.
Prosecutors say Coddington, then 24, became enraged when Hale refused to give him money to buy cocaine.
During a clemency hearing this month before the state's five-member Pardon and Parole Board, an emotional Coddington, now 50, apologized to Hale's family and said he was a different man today.
'I'm clean, I know God, I'm not ... I'm not a vicious murderer,' Coddington told the board. 'If this ends today with my death sentence, OK.'
But Mitch Hale, Albert Hale's son, urged the parole board not to recommend clemency, and said this week he was relieved Stitt decided to let the execution go forward.
'Our family can put this behind us after 25 years,' Hale, 64, said. 'No one is ever happy that someone's dying, but (Coddington) chose this path ... he knew what the consequences are, he rolled the dice and lost.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Can you imagine the family reunions? Whose cell is it going to be in this year?
Another question; I thought Oklahoma was going to use nitrogen hypoxia for executions?
Who knows, 30-06 is my pick.
.308 here, bud ded is ded.
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