Oklahoma executes man for 2001 killing of 2 hotel workers; first lethal injection of 2022
Oklahoma carried out the nation’s first execution of the year on Thursday, administering the state’s third lethal injection since the end of a six-year halt over botched procedures.
Donald Grant, 46, was put to death for the 2001 murders of two hotel workers during a robbery. He received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and declared dead at 10:16 a.m., The Associated Press reported.
Grant at one point began chanting unintelligibly in a disjointed ramble that sufficed for last words.
“I got this. This ain’t nothing,” Grant said, according to NBC News. “I’m solid, son. No meds, no nothing. I’m solid.”
He continued after his mic was cut, watching his family members in the front row from his place on the gurney.
“I’m going to go to the universe, and then I’ll be back,” he said, NBC News reported. “God is here. The true God.”
Gilbert and another inmate, Gilbert Postelle, had sought a temporary injunction from U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot to halt the executions until a trial could be held over the constitutionality of the state’s three-drug lethal injection method. Grant had requested execution by firing squad instead, an ask that was denied on Wednesday by the U.S. Supreme Court, reported NBC News.
Lethal-injection executions had not been carried out for six years before last October, when they were resumed after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay of execution. For the previous six years the practice had been suspended pending a review that eventually determined that the botched, 43-minute execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014 had not been inhumane. In another execution the following year, convicted baby killer Charles Frederick Warner had twitched and claimed his body was “on fire.”
Grant had killed Brenda McElyea, 29, and Felicia Suzette Smith, 43, to eliminate witnesses after he robbed the La Quinta Inn in Del City in July 2001, NBC News recounted.
According to court records, he had shot and stabbed both women, and bludgeoned Smith, the AP said, as both women begged for their lives.
The victims’ relatives said that while their loved ones could not be brought back, justice had been served with the death sentence.
“Although Donald Grant’s execution does not bring Brenda back, it allows us all to finally move forward knowing that justice was served,” Shirl Pilcher, McElyea’s sister, told reporters.
