John David Duty
| John David Duty | |
|---|---|
Photo by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections
|
|
| Born |
April 25, 1952 Oklahoma, USA |
| Died | December 16, 2010 (aged 58) McAlester, Oklahoma, USA |
| Other names | John David Hall |
| Citizenship | American |
| Criminal penalty |
Life imprisonment Execution by lethal injection |
| Criminal status | Executed on December 16, 2010 at Oklahoma State Penitentiary |
| Spouse(s) | Pam Duty |
| Children | 2 sons, 1 daughter |
| Parent(s) | Charles Houston Duty Mildred Duty Hall |
| Conviction(s) |
Kidnapping, rape, robbery, shooting with intent to kill – July 18, 1978 First-degree murder – October 28, 2002 |
John David Duty (April 25, 1952 – December 16, 2010) was an American who was executed in Oklahoma for first-degree murder. According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, he is the first person in the United States to have been put to death with pentobarbital. A nationwide shortage of Sodium Thiopental led the state to incorporate the substitution into their protocol for lethal injections. Duty's case gained media attention because pentobarbital had typically been used to euthanize animals.
Duty was sentenced to death for strangling a fellow inmate at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in December 2001. At the time, Duty had been serving a life sentence for a 1978 conviction of rape, robbery and shooting with intent to kill. He did not contest the murder charge and vowed that he would kill again if he was not executed.
Duty later filed appeals that the change to the method of execution could be inhumane, but was denied. Though his case had gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,opponents of capital punishment claimed that Duty had manipulated the system to be executed as a method of escape from life imprisonment. He was put to death at the same penitentiary where he had committed the murder nearly nine years earlier.
John David Duty was born on April 25, 1952, to Charles Houston Duty and Mildred Duty Hall. Duty stated that he had been raised in a broken home, his mother having remarried twice. His family included two brothers, a sister, a half-brother, and a half-sister. For some time, Duty went by the name of John David Hall; there had been some confusion over the identity of his biological father as his mother had married O.H. Hall at Atoka, Oklahoma in 1950, but his birth certificate listed Duty as his surname. According to Duty, he lost an eye due to an accident in the third grade and suffered a head injury from a collapsed brick wall; the latter incident led him to be hospitalized for scarlet fever. Duty's mother died from an illness in Altus, Oklahoma at the age of 46 on August 24, 1973.
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