James Coddington's Execution Begins Oklahoma's Death Row Purge

The state of Oklahoma executed convicted murderer James Coddington on Thursday in the first of 25 executions set to take place in the state between now and 2024.

Coddington was declared dead after lethal injection at 10:16 a.m. local time after Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt declined to grant clemency following a recommendation by the state's Board of Pardon and Parole.

The 50-year-old had admitted to the 1997 murder of his 73-year-old co-worker, Albert Hale, who had refused to lend Coddington $50. Hale was beaten on the head with a hammer at least three times at his own home in Choctaw, Oklahoma.

The state parole board voted 3 to 2 to recommend clemency for Coddington earlier this month, recommending that his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment without parole.

Stitt, a Republican, rejected that recommendation on Wednesday, permitting the execution to take place.

"After thoroughly reviewing arguments and evidence presented by all sides of the case, Governor Kevin Stitt has denied the Pardon and Parole Board's clemency recommendation for James Allen Coddington," the governor's office said in a statement.

The parole board had considered Coddington's traumatic childhood and the fact he had been an "exemplary" prisoner among the mitigating factors in favor of commutation.

Emma Rolls, an attorney for Coddington, said on Wednesday that the inmate and his legal team were "profoundly disheartened" by Stitt's decision.

"James is loved by many people," she said. "And he has touched the hearts of many. He is a good man."

Newsweek has asked Coddington's attorney and the Oklahoma governor's office for comment.

Coddington has been executed following a ruling by a federal judge in June that Oklahoma's three-drug lethal injection protocol is constitutional.

That protocol involves administering the sedative midazolam, followed by the paralytic vecuronium bromide, and then potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

The plaintiffs seeking to prevent the use of the protocol were 28 death row inmates whose counsel argued midazolam does not render a person unable to feel pain and therefore the protocol violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

The graphic below, provided by Statista, shows which states have the death penalty.

Senior U.S. Judge Stephen Friot disagreed, writing: "The evidence persuades the court, and not by a small margin, that even though midazolam is not the drug of choice for maintaining prolonged deep anesthesia, it can be relied upon, as used in the Oklahoma execution protocol, to render the inmate insensate to pain for the few minutes required to complete the execution."

That ruling paved the way for Oklahoma to begin scheduling the execution of death row inmates. The state intends to execute 25 men at a rate of about one every month into 2024.

Coddington is the first and he was due to be followed in September by Richard Glossip, who was convicted of commissioning a murder in 1997. Glossip has maintained his innocence and was granted a 60-day stay of execution by Stitt on August 16 while a state appeals court examines the case.

Glossip, who was the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, was almost executed in 2015 before officials realized they received the wrong lethal injection drug.

Nonetheless, Oklahoma plans to proceed with executions which will see more than half of the state's 43 death row inmates put to death over the next two years.

There had been an effective moratorium on the death penalty in the state due to a series of botched executions until October 2021 when convicted murderer John Grant was put to death via lethal injection. Witnesses reported that he convulsed repeatedly on the gurney and vomited.

Since Grant's death, three further executions have been carried out without noticeable complications.