Oklahoma executes man who claimed he killed two in self-defense
Phillip Dean Hancock killed by lethal injection after Republican governor declines to commute sentence despite recommendation
Oklahoma executed a man on Thursday who claimed he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed two men in Oklahoma City in 2001.
Phillip Dean Hancock, 59, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma state penitentiary and was declared dead at 11.29am.
He requested a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, dark meat only with no sides, as his final meal which he had with a root beer he bought on his own from commissary, according to a prison spokesman.
His execution went forward once the Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, declined to commute his sentence, despite a clemency recommendation from the state’s pardon and parole board.
“By unnecessarily stringing out his decision-making process for weeks, he has left the families of the victims in this case, all of Phil’s advocates and loved ones, the prison workers, and Phil himself, waiting for the news,” Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of the anti-death penalty group Death Penalty Action, said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Stitt did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the governor’s decision to deny clemency or why it was delayed until shortly after the execution was originally scheduled.
Hancock had long claimed he shot and killed Robert Jett Jr, 37, and James Lynch, 58, in self-defense after the two men attacked him inside Jett’s home in south Oklahoma City. Hancock’s attorneys claimed at a clemency hearing this month that Jett and Lynch were members of outlaw motorcycle gangs and that Jett lured Hancock, who was unarmed, to Jett’s home.
A female witness said Jett ordered Hancock to get inside a large cage before swinging a metal bar at him. After Jett and Lynch attacked him, his attorneys said, Hancock managed to take Jett’s pistol from him and shoot them both, claiming to the parole board that “they forced me to fight for my life.”
Hancock’s lawyers also have said his trial attorneys have acknowledged they were struggling with substance abuse during the case and failed to present important evidence.
But attorneys for the state argued that Hancock gave shifting accounts of what exactly happened and that his testimony did not align with physical evidence.
Hancock is the fourth incarcerated person in Oklahoma to be executed this year and the 11th since Oklahoma resumed executions in October 2021 following a nearly six-year hiatus resulting from problems with lethal injections in 2014 and 2015. Oklahoma has executed more people per capita than any other state since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty.
HUNTSVILLE, Texas −David Santiago Renteria spoke his last words Thursday night, strapped to a gurney at the Huntsville Unit, minutes before being executed in the 2001 abduction and killing of 5-year-old Alexandra Flores.
Renteria, 53, was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital Thursday, Nov. 16, on a dark, cold and rainy evening at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s prison. His time of death was 7:11 p.m. CST, prison officials said.
With his family and Alexandra’s family present, Renteria gave his final statements.
Killer’s final words
Renteria prayed before singing a hymn in English and another in Spanish after witnesses, including relatives of his victim, entered the death chamber and watched through a window a few feet from him during his execution.
Looking at his victim’s relatives, Renteria also said: “There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about the fateful events of that day and what transpired.
“There are no words to describe what you’re going through, and I understand that.”
He told his sister and a friend, watching through another window, that he was “good… strong”.
“I love you all, I truly do. I’ll see you in the next life,” Renteria added.
He then began reciting The Lord’s Prayer as the drugs began flowing. “Our father, who art in heaven” is as far as he got.
“I taste it,” he said of the drug, before mumbling something and all movement stopped.
The Renteria family watched the execution from a different room from Alexandra’s family. Glass windows separated the witnesses from Renteria.
This photo released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows death row inmate David Renteria. Renteria, a Texas inmate convicted of strangling a 5-year-old girl taken from an El Paso store and then burning her body nearly 22 years ago is facing execution. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)
Alexandra’s sister, Sandra Frausto, and brother, Ignacio Frausto, attended the execution.
Renteria’s sister Cecilia Esparza and a friend also were present.
Esparza collapsed when she walked into the viewing room, and prison officials brought her a chair and she cried. Renteria told his sister through the glass, “I love you.”
Last days on Texas death row for one of El Paso’s most notorious killers
Renteria spent his final days meeting with visitors, laying in bed, watching TV through a cell door and sleeping, a Death Watch report states. The times listed below are in Central time zone.
On his execution day, starting at 12:15 a.m., he sat on his bed and began writing. The report does not state what he wrote.
He began packing up his property about 2:30 a.m., before sitting on the floor and reading a book around 4 a.m., the report states. He then continued packing up his property and cleaning the floor between 5 to 7:30 a.m.
Renteria was allowed to talk to fellow inmates at 7:30 a.m., before meeting with visitors from 8 to 11:30a.m., the death watch states.
He was then transferred from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, to the Huntsville Unit to await his execution.
A victim of Renteria’s from a different criminal incident and her mother also attended the execution. Renteria was previously convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for indecency with a child in El Paso.
The execution was also attended by 14 state law enforcement and governmental officials.
Renteria grew up in the Lower Valley and was a tribal member of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
While in prison, he rededicated himself to his Roman Catholic faith, the coalition reported.
Renteria’s execution ends a nearly 22-year legal battle waged in what has been described as one of the most heinous crimes committed in El Paso.
“I’ve always been a supporter of the death penalty and from a law enforcement perspective, I just think some people are too dangerous to be in our society and that is certainly one individual who I think that that the death penalty is absolutely appropriate,” El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said. “It’s a long time coming. I think it’s been what? Twenty-one years. I was actually the assistant (El Paso police) chief, (Carlos) Leon was the chief when that horrific crime occurred. It was really tough on everybody. I can’t even imagine what that family went through and what they’re still going through today.
“Hopefully, this will give them a little bit of relief to help them in their recovery that is going to take the rest of their lives, Wiles said. “I can’t even imagine losing my 5-year-old daughter to such a horrific crime.”
Justice served for Alexandra Flores in 2001 abduction nearly 22 years later
Renteria’s execution came two days before the 22nd anniversary of the day he kidnapped 5-year-old Alexandra Flores from an El Paso Walmart, strangled her to death and then burned her body. It also comes six days before his 54th birthday.
Renteria abducted Alexandra Nov. 18, 2001, as she was Christmas shopping with her parents at an El Paso Lower Valley Walmart.
Her parents realized she was missing and searched the store but could not find her. Alexandra was seen on store surveillance video exiting the store about 5:15 p.m. with Renteria.
Alexandra’s body was found about 7:10 a.m. the next day in an alley 16 miles (25km) away.. She was naked and partially burned in a carport near Downtown El Paso.
An autopsy revealed Alexandra was strangled to death and then set ablaze, court documents state. Investigators later revealed there were no signs of sexual assault.
A palm print on a plastic bag found over Alexandra’s head was determined to be from Renteria, court documents state.
El Paso Police Department investigators discovered that a vehicle registered to Renteria was at 9441 Alameda Ave. at the time and date of Alexandra’s disappearance. Renteria also told police he was at the location at the time and date of her disappearance, court documents state.
Renteria went to trial for the death of Alexandra in September 2003. He claimed in his trial that Barrio Azteca gang members forced him to kidnap the girl and someone else was the person who killed her, court records show.
A jury convicted him of capital murder and he was sentenced to death.
Appeals court justices heard the case in 2006 and upheld the conviction. However, the justices ordered a new sentencing phase of the trial.
The resentencing was ordered because of “exclusion of evidence showing the defendant’s remorse violated due process by preventing defendant from rebutting the State’s case when the State left jury with false impression and emphasized it,” the justices wrote in their opinion.
A May 15, 2008, El Paso Times article reporting David Santiago Renteria was given the death penalty during his resentencing hearing.
Casey McWhorter (ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS)
An Alabama man who shot and killed his friend’s father in a premeditated robbery in 1993 has been put to death, killed by lethal injection on Thursday — over 30 years after the initial crime. Before he died, however, he had a dire message for other youth who were going through a tough mental time like he was.
Casey McWhorter was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death after slaughtering 34-year-old Edward Lee Williams, 34, at the age of 18. He and two other teens, Williams’ 15-year-old son, conspired to steal money from his home and kill him. He went to the home to commit the crime but didn’t have the intention of actually following through with the killing, he said in a recent interview.
But the situation escalated after the older Williams came home during the robbery and surprised the teens. He said they had been in the home grabbing various items when he came in and began fighting with his son over the gun he had. That’s when McWhorter came out of one of the back rooms. Williams immediately noticed him and started swinging at him, and so he did the only thing he could think to do — he shot the other gun that was in his hand at that point, and it hit Williams in the abdomen despite McWhorter saying he had aimed for the legs.
Casey A. McWhorter spent most of his adult life on Alabama’s death row. Thursday night he died there.
The state of Alabama executed McWhorter, 49, by lethal injection in the death chamber of the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. He was convicted of capital murder in 1994 in connection with a 1993 Marshall County robbery and homicide. He went to death row when he was 19. He had been 18 three months earlier, when the murder was committed.
The drapes of the media witness room opened at 6:30 p.m. McWhorter was lying in a bed partially covered by a tightly drawn white sheet. His head and torso were slightly elevated. He was lying cruciform, with both arms facing palm up. Restraints for his body were on top of the sheet. Two IV lines came from a small window in the back wall of the death chamber. One appeared to enter his right arm near the inside of his elbow, and the other appeared to enter his left arm at the inside of his left elbow.
Warden Terry Raybon read the death warrant and governor’s order of execution. McWhorter was given the opportunity to say last words.
His final words were: “I would like to say I love my mother and family. I would like to say to the victim’s family I’m sorry. I hope you found peace.” He then also took a jab at his executioner, the prison warden, who faced many accusations of domestic violence accusations decades ago, calling him a “habitual abuser of women.””
At 6:33 p.m. McWhorter closed his eyes. A minute later he shifted his legs, clenched his fists and moved his fingers.
He was approached by his spiritual advisor.
At 6:35 p.m. he was moving his fingers. And at 6:37 p.m. he raised his head, made a yawning motion, appeared to gasp and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. At 6:39 p.m. he appeared to stop breathing.
His spiritual advisor made the sign of the cross.
A few minutes after a corrections officer inside the death chamber bent to McWhorter’s ear and loudly called his name, the officer then touched his face and pinched the inside of his right arm.
At 6:47 p.m. the drapes to the media witness room were drawn.
McWhorter’s official time of death was given as 6:56 p.m.
McWhorter’s final meal consisted of Turtles candy, and he had visits with his mother, stepdad and a spiritual advisor, a prison spokesperson said. He also spoke with his attorney and his friends by phone. His death was the second execution in Alabama this year.
After the execution, a news conference was held inside the media center.
It took two “sticks” to access McWhorter’s veins, one to his right arm and one to his left arm, said JohnHamm, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections. He read a lengthy letter from April Williams, the daughter of Edward Lee Williams, the victim of the homicide.
She was 16 when her father was murdered.
“My Dad was only 33 years old. He should still be here,” the letter read, in part. “He should be ready to retire.”
Gilbert “Bert” Williams, Edward Lee Williams’ brother, addressed the media.
“It took 30 years for this to occur. It’s a kind of unfortunate that we had to wait this long, but justice has been served,” he said.
Gilbert Williams compared McWhorter’s execution to “…the peaceful death to a murderous dog.”
There are three witness rooms in the death chamber, which is attached to the building that houses death row. One witness room is for the victim’s family, one is for the media and the inmate‘s witnesses, and one is for state officials. McWhorter had no witnesses.
Brewer lost a clemency appeal earlier this week, despite one of his jurors pleading that his life be spared and an expert witness’ methods put into question. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to pause Brewer’s execution Thursday afternoon to hear arguments about the “junk science” used against him.
The state of Texas executed Brent Brewer, who spent three decades on death row onThursday evening for the 1990 murder of Robert Laminack. It was the seventh execution of 2023.
In late appeals, Brewer’s lawyers argued that his death should be delayed to consider the issue of unreliable testimony, or what his lawyers called “junk science,” but late Thursday afternoon the U.S. Supreme Court denied that request. Earlier this week, Texas’ highest criminal appeals court declined similar motions to stay Brewer’s execution.
The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously rejected Brewer clemency appeal on Tuesday. Brewer’s legal team requested a lesser penalty for him on the grounds that one of the state’s expert witnesses used unreliable methodologies to testify and that a juror says they mistakenly sentenced Brewer to death.
At 6:23 p.m., Brewer was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital. He died 15 minutes later.
“I would like to tell the family of the victim that I could never figure out the words to fix what I have broken. I just want you to know that this 53-year-old is not the same reckless 19-year-old kid from 1990. I hope you find peace,” Brewer said in a final statement.
Brent Brewer was convicted of killing Laminack, who owned a business in Amarillo, according to court documents. Brewer asked Laminack for a ride to a Salvation Army with his girlfriend Kristie Nystrom. While en route, Brewer stabbed the 66-year-old Laminack and stole $140 in cash.
Brewer was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder, but in 2007 the U.S. Supreme Court found that his jury was not given sufficient opportunity for the jury to consider a less severe punishment. Two years later, another jury also sentenced Brewer to death.
Michele Douglas was one of the 2009 jurors. After listening to the evidence, Douglas believed that Brewer didn’t intend to kill Laminack, “things simply got out of hand, with a tragic outcome,” she wrote in an Houston Chronicle opinion piece last week, requesting clemency for Brewer.
During the trial, Douglas did not want to vote in favor of capital punishment for Laminack’s murder, which she did not think was premeditated. Douglas said she misunderstood the jury instructions.
“Believing — incorrectly — that my vote was meaningless, I acquiesced in the majority’s death penalty verdict. I cried when it was read in court. I was haunted afterwards,” Douglas wrote last week.
A death sentence requires a unanimous vote from the jury in Texas. Over the years, jurors in different capital cases across the state have said the instructions are not clear and they would have voted for life sentences without the possibility of parole if they had known that was an option. Lawmakers in the Texas House have passed legislation during several sessions attempting to clarify the instructions but those bills failed to get support from the Senate.
“There’s nothing political about this — it’s about whether the awesome power of the government to take a life is given to it knowingly rather than by what amounts to trickery,” said Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, in a statement about the role of misleading jury instructions in Brewer’s case ahead of Brewer’s execution. “This simply can’t continue; it’s morally wrong. I call on leaders in both parties and both chambers to pass this legislation swiftly at the next possible opportunity.”
During Brewer’s 2009 sentencing, the state called on forensic psychiatrist Dr. Richard Coons to testify about the danger Brewer posed to those in prison. Coons was a regular expert, called on by the state in dozens of death penalty cases, to forecast how defendants would behave in the future.
Coons asserted that a significant amount of crime goes unreported in prisons, and while Brewer’s record was largely clean, it was likely the defendant would commit more acts of violence.
But three years after Coons testified on Brewer’s dangerousness, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that the psychiatrist’s techniques for predicting the risks defendants posed were unreliable.
“We see this case as a kind of an outlier, based on all of these things that have happened in this case, including the junk science that was presented,” Shawn Nolan, Brewer’s attorney, told The Texas Tribune on Monday.
But on Tuesday, the same court rejected Brewer’s motions to stay his execution, which were part of his legal team’s effort to challenge the use of Coons’ testimony in Brewer’s sentencing. Coons never evaluated Brewer yet still told the jury that the defendant would pose a risk to those in prison. The appeals court maintained that Brewer’s lawyer at the time did not sufficiently object to Coons testimony.
“His execution is the farthest thing from justice,” Nolan said in a statement after the Supreme Court declined to intervene ahead of Brewer’s execution. “Texas used the unscientific, baseless testimony of Dr. Richard Coons to claim Brent would be a future danger, although the state and the courts have admitted for years that this exact doctor’s testimony was unreliable and should not be considered by juries in capital cases.”
Nolan filed a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to pause the Nov. 9 execution date to consider the issue with Coons’ testimony, according to court documents.
Last year in federal court, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk found that Brewer’s 2009 trial lawyers acted reasonably by not objecting to Coons’ testimony before his methodologies were ruled unreliable. Earlier this year the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Kacsmaryk’s opinion.
Nolan said Brewer joined the religious programming available to those on death row and since then he has grown as a person of faith, which was also cited in Brewer’s clemency application.
“Worries are kind of small when you’ve taken someone’s life, you know, when someone is permanently gone like that. But I am sorry for what I did,” Brewer said in a video included in his clemency application. “Even if it doesn’t change the outcome, at least they get to hear it before I go.”
On Tuesday evening, 3rd January, Missouri witnessed the execution of the first transgender woman in the U.S. Amber McLaughlin, a 49-year-old openly transgender woman was executed in Missouri for a 2003 murder. This is the first-ever execution of a transgender in the U.S. Amber McLaughlin was found guilty of stalking and killing a former girlfriend before disposing of her body near the Mississippi River in St. Louis. McLaughlin’s fate was sealed earlier Tuesday when Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied the request for clemency.
McLaughlin was convicted of first-degree murder in 2006 in the killing of Beverly Guenther, and a judge sentenced her to death after the jury deadlocked on its sentencing decision. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson denied clemency Tuesday after advocates expressed concern over her sentencing.
“McLaughlin is a violent criminal,” Parson said in a statement Tuesday. “Ms Guenther’s family and loved ones deserve peace. The State of Missouri will carry out McLaughlin’s sentence according to the Court’s order and deliver justice.”
What was the 2003 case of McLaughlin?
McLaughlin was in a relationship with a woman, Beverly Guenther before her transition into a transgender woman. After they stopped dating, McLaughlin would show up at the suburban St. Louis office where the 45-year-old Guenther worked, sometimes hiding inside the building, according to court records. Guenther obtained a restraining order, and police officers occasionally escorted her to her car after work.
When Guenther did not return home on the night of 20th November 2003, her neighbours called the police. Officers went to the office building and discovered a blood trail and a broken knife handle near her car. McLaughlin led police to a location near the Mississippi River in St. Louis a day later, where the body had been dumped. Authorities claimed she was raped and repeatedly stabbed with a steak knife.
In 2006, McLaughlin was found guilty of first-degree murder. McLaughlin was sentenced to death by a judge after a jury deadlocked on the verdict. According to Komp, Missouri and Indiana are the only states where a judge can sentence someone to death.
A court in 2016 ordered a new sentencing hearing, but a federal appeals court panel reinstated the death penalty in 2021.
McLaughlin was pronounced dead at 6:51 pm. at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, according to the Missouri Department of Corrections.
McLaughlin spoke quietly with a spiritual adviser at her side as the fatal dose of pentobarbital was injected. McLaughlin breathed heavily a couple of times, then shut her eyes. She was pronounced dead a few minutes later.
Final statement
“I am sorry for what I did,” McLaughlin said in a final, written, statement. “I am a loving and caring person.”
This morning McLaughlin was served a final meal of a cheeseburger, french fries, a strawberry milkshake and peanut M&Ms.
McLaughlin began her transition in prison about three years ago, according to a fellow inmate and friend, Jessica Hicklin. Hicklin said she rarely spoke to McLaughlin before McLaughlin’s transition, describing her fellow inmate as shy.
“Definitely a vulnerable person,” Hicklin described McLaughlin. “Definitely afraid of being assaulted or victimised, which is more common for trans folks in the Department of Corrections.”
Claim your Innocence 