In January the first execution of 2022 was carried out in the small US state of Oklahoma.
Donald Grant, who had admitted killing two women Brenda McElyea, 29, and Felicia Suzette Smith, 43, during a 2001 robbery, died after being injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs.
One of the last things he said was: “Yo god I got this, I got this, it’s nothing.”
Bookmarking the year, it was very almost another Oklahoma execution.
It was only because the Federal Bureau of Prisons refused to hand John Fitzgerald Hanson over to Oklahoma authorities that he wasn’t put to death on December 15, the last scheduled execution of the year.
For a small state Oklahoma executes a lot of people.
Although Texas leads the way in sheer numbers of people put to death (578 people since 1976), it’s Oklahoma (119 people since 1976) that kills the most people per capita.
With a smaller population and a willingness to carry out capital punishment, it has an execution rate of 2.83 per 100,000 residents.
Currently the state is in the middle of an unprecedented spree.
Following a six year break, in June an Oklahoma court set dates for 25 death row prisoners to be executed, at a rate of around one a month.
This string of executions started in late August and will run through until December 2024.
Next year Oklahoma is scheduled to execute the most prisoners out of all the US states.
The pause in capital punishment came after the horrific botched execution of Clayton Lockett.
After an intravenous line was set incorrectly the victim writhed on the gurney in a pool of blood for 36 minutes before dying of a heart attack.
At one point he even tried to get up and could be heard trying to speak.
A witness later said: "It looked like torture."
Despite the horror associated with the death penalty, it has a lot of favour in the US.
The most recent Gallup poll, conducted in October 2022, found that the majority of Americans support the death penalty with 55 per cent in favour and 42 against.
When party political persuasion is taken into affect it skews the results further.
A 2015 poll by the Pew Resource Centre found 77 per cent of Republicans, 57 per cent of Independents, and 40 per cent of Democrats said they favoured the death penalty.
With Republican voters overwhelmingly supporting capital punishment, it would explain the enthusiasm for execution among Oklahoma’s elected body.
It’s a red state through and through from Governor level down to State House.
When Joe Biden ran for President he swore to “eliminate the death penalty”.
Although he’s introduced a federal moratorium on executions, states can still carry out capital punishment as they deem fit.
Biden’s liberal critics have slammed his lack of action on the death penalty especially after the United Nations vote on Thursday December 15 when the US sided with Iran and North Korea against an anti-capital punishment resolution.
Some more liberal state authorities are taking swift action against the death penalty, such as Democrat Governor Kate Brown who commuted the sentences of all 17 convicts on death row.
But Republican leaning states, such as Oklahoma, are unlikely to budge on this issue until action is taken at a federal level.
For now the executioners will continue to work their grim trade and Oklahoma will lead the way on capital punishment.
