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Thread: Oklahoma Capital Punishment History

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Oklahoma Capital Punishment History

    Capital punishment has been the law in Oklahoma since 1804 when Congress made the criminal laws of the United States applicable in the Louisiana Purchase, which included present Oklahoma. These legal codes included the crime of “willful murder,” carrying the death penalty. Through the years Congress found other offenses, including rape, that merited capital punishment as well.

    Until Oklahoma 1907 statehood, capital crimes committed in Indian Territory were tried in the federal courts for Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas. However, the U.S. Federal District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, presided over by notorious Judge Isaac C. Parker, was Indian Territory’s most famous criminal venue, with seventy-nine men going to the gallows under sentence of his court.

    In 1889 Congress established a U.S. district court at Muskogee, the first federal court resident in Indian Territory. However, the court did not have jurisdiction of capital offenses, which continued to be tried in the federal courts for Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas. In 1890 a territorial government, with its own judicial structure, was established for Oklahoma Territory. Until statehood, capital crimes committed in Oklahoma Territory were prosecuted in the territorial courts.

    In 1895 Congress gave the Muskogee court, as of September 1, 1896, exclusive jurisdiction of all offenses committed against the laws of the United States in Indian Territory and repealed the jurisdiction of the Arkansas, Kansas, and Texas federal courts. One man was hanged under sentence of the Oklahoma Territory courts, and nine men and one woman went to the gallows under sentence of the Indian Territory court. From statehood until 19l5 executions were by hanging in the county of conviction. The records are not perfect, but the number of people hanged between statehood and 1915 is probably six, all men accused of murder. The fact that the number was not higher is because of Lee Cruce, Oklahoma’s second governor.

    Cruce was an inveterate foe of the death penalty. The best information is that only one person was executed during his term in office (1911-15), while at least twenty-two murderers escaped the hangman’s noose. Cruce’s successor, Robert L. Williams, did not share Cruce’s view on capital punishment, and executions began again when Williams took office. The first year of Williams’s term also saw Oklahoma change from hanging to electrocution as a method of execution.

    In 1915 Henry Bookman, convicted in McIntosh County for murder, was the first person to be electrocuted in Oklahoma. The first execution for an offense other than homicide occurred in 1930. James Edward Forrest was put to death for rape, and subsequently there were executions for robbery with firearms and for kidnapping. In the late 1920s and during the 1930s there were as many as three on the same day. In 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty, as then administered, unconstitutional, eighty-two persons, all male, had died in Oklahoma’s electric chair.

    After the Supreme Court’s ruling, states began attempting to enact constitutional death penalty statutes. Gov. David Boren convened a special session of the legislature in July 1976 to restore the capital punishment in Oklahoma. The legislators overwhelmingly voted in favor, 45 to 1 in the senate, and 93 to 5 in the house. The first execution under the new law occurred in 1990. From 1915 to Dec. 2010, Oklahoma has executed 177 individuals, including three women. Between 1915 and 1966 eighty-two died by electrocution, and one was hanged. Ninety-four died from lethal injection between Sept. 1990 and Dec. 2010.

    For more information visit the Oklahoma Historical Society’s Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture at http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia.

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Death chair has lengthy McAlester history

    McALESTER — Recently, the city of McAlester and the Oklahoma Department of Corrections began having a custody battle over “Old Sparky,” Oklahoma’s infamous electric chair. Sometime during the 1970s, the city of McAlester acquired ownership of the electric chair from the DOC and then returned it some years later so that the Oklahoma State Penitentiary could place it on display in their on-site museum amongst the many other prison artifacts.

    The city of McAlester claims the DOC and OSP only had temporary custody of “Old Sparky,” providing that they kept the chair on-site and on display for the public to see. Recent DOC discussions regarding plans to move the artifacts from the museum to an off-site location, or possibly to a mobile museum, has stirred up the recent custody battle over Oklahoma’s electric chair. The city of McAlester wants to keep the chair local. The city even has a home waiting for the chair at the James Earl Tannehill museum in McAlester — if the city reigns victorious in the custody battle.

    Between 1915 and 1966, 82 Oklahoma death row inmates were executed by electrocution. On Aug. 10, 1966, at approximately 10 p.m., “Old Sparky” was fired up for the last time when 29-year-old, two-time murderer James D. French sat in the death chair and said these famous last words: “How about this for a headline for tomorrow’s paper? — French fries!”

    http://mcalesternews.com/local/x1709...lester-history

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Here is an autopsy report that covers just about everything they go over after an execution including the collection of all needles and vials used to execute the condemned.

    https://www.scribd.com/document/5653...een&from_embed
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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