Capital punishment in Oklahoma

Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Oklahoma.

The state has executed the second largest number of convicts in the United States (after Texas) since re-legalization following Gregg v. Georgia in 1976. Oklahoma also has the highest number of executions per capita in the country.

Oklahoma was the first jurisdiction in the world to adopt lethal injection as method of execution.

In Oklahoma, first-degree murder is punishable by death in the following circumstances:

Oklahoma statute books still provide the death penalty for first-degree rape, extortionate kidnapping, and rape or forcible sodomy of a victim under 14 where the defendant had a prior conviction of sexual abuse of a person under 14 but the death penalty for these crimes is no longer constitutional since the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case Kennedy v. Louisiana.

When the prosecution seeks the death penalty, the sentence is decided by the jury and must be unanimous.

In case of a hung jury during the penalty phase of the trial, a life sentence is issued, even if a single juror opposed death (there is no retrial).

Under the state Constitution, the Governor of Oklahoma may grant a commutation of the death sentence, but only with advice and consent of the five-member Pardon and Parole Board. Two inmates post-Furman had their death sentences commuted.

In earlier years Governor Lee Cruce commuted every death sentence imposed during his administration (1911–1915).

Oklahoma is the only state allowing more than two methods of execution in its statutes, providing lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, electrocution and firing squad to be used in that order in the event that all earlier methods are unavailable. The nitrogen option was added by the Oklahoma Legislature in 2015 and has never been used in a judicial execution, though it is routinely used to give a painless death in animal euthanasia.

On December 16, 2010, Oklahoma became the first American state to use pentobarbital, in the execution of John David Duty. In 2014, Oklahoma placed scheduled executions on hold until the state's Department of Corrections implemented eleven proposed improvements in protocols governing capital punishment. The review of the lethal injection administration process resulted from the protracted 33 minute execution of Clayton Darrell Lockett in which a doctor and a paramedic failed nearly a dozen times to administer an IV with lethal drugs. Executions resumed on January 15, 2015 with the execution of Charles Frederick Warner by lethal injection.

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