Who Is Jemaine Cannon? Oklahoma Set to Execute Young Mother's Murderer

Jemaine Cannon, the 51-year-old death row inmate convicted of killing a young mother nearly three decades ago, is set to be executed Thursday in Oklahoma.

Cannon was sentenced in 1996 for the murder of Sharonda Clark, who was found dead in her apartment in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in February 1995. According to court documents, Cannon at the time was serving a 15-year sentence for attacking an 18-year-old, but had escaped from a work center and was being harbored by Clark for roughly three weeks before her death.

According to records from the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, the young woman that Cannon had previously attacked was beaten in the head with an iron, a toaster and a hammer. Prosecutors also argued that Cannon had a history of violence with previous girlfriends.

Police discovered Clark's body after she was reported missing by a relative when she failed to pick up her two young children from day care. She was 20 years old at the time of the murder.

Court records show that Cannon's mother convinced him to turn himself in to police after he had told her that Clark was dead. The convict claimed that he had killed the woman in self-defense, read court documents, but police said that they found no signs of noticeable wounds on Cannon when he was arrested.

The Oklahoman reported that Clark was found with three stab wounds to her neck, and that authorities at the time said she had died in a "violent struggle." Police arrested Cannon after he was found in Flint, Michigan, where he fled to stay with an uncle.

Cannon's lawyers have filed several appeals during his time on death row, including a petition that was denied by the state Pardon and Parole Board last month. According to Cannon's attorney Mark Henricksen, who spoke at a news conference in June, "There's a dispute as to who attacked whom first."

"The ending of human life was never desired, planned or premeditated, no murder occurred," Cannon said during the June 7 clemency hearing, according to KWTV. "Due to the acts committed against me, I defended my life."

But Cannon's clemency petition was ultimately denied, an action that was celebrated by Clark's family, including her daughter, Mazurennae, who was just 2 years old at the time of her mother's death.

"Relief for my family, relief for my sister's pain, relief for my grandmother that didn't make it to see this day," Mazurennae told KWTV.

Newsweek has reached out to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for additional information.

Oklahoma has put eight men to death since resuming lethal injections in October 2021 following a six-year moratorium prompted by a series of flawed executions.

Last year then attorney general John O'Connor asked the state Court of Criminal Appeals to schedule 25 executions, spaced about a month apart, after a federal judge rejected a challenge to the Oklahoma lethal injection protocol.

But earlier this year the court granted Drummond's request to slow down the pace of executions. The last inmate put to death in Oklahoma was Scott Eizember in January.

"It's been more than six months without an execution in Oklahoma, and things are no different than when they were doing one every month in the latter part of 2022," Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, told Newsweek.

Pointing to the results of a February poll, Bonowitz said: "In fact, 78 percent of Oklahomans support a halt to executions while the legislature implements the more than 40 recommendations of the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission. If they won't fix it, they should end it—and soon, because the next guy in line has a solid actual innocence claim that no court will entertain."

The next inmate scheduled for execution in Oklahoma is Anthony Sanchez on September 21.