US Supreme Court Rejects Appeals of 4 in Oklahoma slayings
Mike Seals - October 6, 2020 11:00 pm
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the appeals of four death row inmates in Oklahoma slayings.
The court on Monday denied requests for hearings from inmates Alfred Mitchell, Marlon Harmon, Nicholas Davis and Edward Fields.
Attorneys for the men did not return phone calls for comment or declined comment.
Mitchell, Harmon and Davis were convicted in Oklahoma City slayings, while Fields is on federal death row for killing a couple in a southeastern Oklahoma national forest.
Executions in Oklahoma have been on hold since a botched lethal injection in 2014 that left an inmate writhing on the gurney and drug mix-ups in 2015 in which the wrong lethal drugs were delivered.
Federal authorities have carried out seven executions this year with an eighth scheduled for Nov. 19.
The high court also vacated the Tulsa murder conviction and life sentence of Garry Wayne Wilson, who has said he is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and that the crime occurred on Cherokee land.
The court agreed that Wilson’s case should be reconsidered in light of its July ruling that a large part of eastern Oklahoma remains an American Indian reservation and that the state lacks authority to pursue criminal cases against American Indian defendants.
