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July 20, 2023
Oklahoma completes execution for murder committed nearly 30 years ago
As reported in this AP piece, "Oklahoma executed a man Thursday for stabbing a Tulsa woman to death with a butcher knife in 1995 after his escape from a prison work center." Here is more:
Jemaine Cannon, 51, received a lethal injection at 10:01 a.m. and was pronounced dead 12 minutes later at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. It was the second execution in Oklahoma this year and the ninth since the state resumed lethal injections in 2021.
Cannon was convicted of killing 20-year-old Sharonda Clark, a mother of two with whom Cannon had been living at an apartment in Tulsa after his escape weeks earlier from a prison work center in southwest Oklahoma. Cannon had been serving a 15-year sentence for the violent assault of another woman who suffered permanent injuries after prosecutors say Cannon raped her and beat her viciously with a claw hammer, iron and kitchen toaster.
A federal appeals court late Wednesday denied Cannon’s last-minute appeal seeking a stay of execution in which Cannon claimed, among other things, that he was Native American and not subject to Oklahoma jurisdiction. Asked if he had any last words, Cannon said: “Yes, I confess with my mouth and believe in my heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. Therefore I am saved. Thank you.”...
Clark’s eldest daughter, Yeh-Sehn White, and Clark’s sister, Shaya Duncan, witnessed Cannon’s execution and described it as peaceful. “In my opinion, he died in a very favorable way,” White said. “Unfortunately my mom did not have that opportunity.”...
In a statement sent to The Associated Press this week, Henricksen said the state’s decision to proceed with Cannon’s execution amounted to “historic barbarism.”
“Mr. Cannon has endured abuse and neglect for fifty years by those charged with his care,” Henricksen said. “He sits in his cell a model prisoner. He is nearly deaf, blind, and nearing death by natural causes. The decision to proceed with this particular execution is obscene.”
But White and prosecutors from the attorney general’s office urged the state to execute Cannon, and the board rejected clemency on a 3-2 vote.
July 20, 2023 at 05:33 PM | Permalink
Comments
First, good riddance. It should have been done in three years.
Call me cynical, but I have a question.
When a guy is guilty as hell, as this one, does the bar seem to get more inept? There is always an “ineffective counsel” claim. Is that a Hail Mary from appellate lawyers or do trial attorneys sometimes purposely leave a flaw in the defense to create more avenues for appeal and lengthen the process?
Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jul 20, 2023 9:18:56 PM
Master Tarls, you ask a good question that has an answer based in the nature of a discretionary (and infrequently employed) death penalty processes. Because a death sentence involves a jury determination (that usually has to be unanimous) and is relatively rare, it is relatively easy (and often plausible) for appellate lawyers to claim in hindsight that defense lawyers could and should have made a better mitigating "case for life." Indeed, when the defendant is clearly guilty, it is even easier to assert that trial lawyers were ineffective if they "wasted" time on the guilt phase of the trial and failed to build the strongest possible case for the penalty phase. (High-profile mass shootings like the Parkland case where the jury did not return a death sentence add force to the claim that defense attorneys should be able to always develop a winning "mitigating" case.)
Critically, these ineffectiveness claims are not just assertions that the trial lawyers were bad in court. Typically they involve claims that trial lawyers failed to investigate school records and/or family record to identify childhood traumas or mental health issues or all sorts of other matters --- matters that trial lawyers rarely have unlimited time or resources to investigate, but that can be more readily found with the benefit of hindsight and the luxury of time that capital appellate lawyers can have.
Ironically, any decision by a trial attorney to "sandbag" would be awfully short-sighted (and might itself support a claim of ineffectiveness) because the odds for getting a single juror to vote against death would always seem greater than to get an appellate court to reverse a death sentence after imposed by a jury. And, of course, a jury verdict of life sticks, whereas any appellate reversal will likely lead to another capital trial.
Posted by: Doug B | Jul 21, 2023 8:14:49 AM
Thanks for alleviating my cynicism, Doug.
I once testified in Federal court in the sentencing phase of a DP trial, and have always been curious about the strategy behind it.
Posted by: TarlsQtr | Jul 21, 2023 11:45:56 AM
"Ironically, any decision by a trial attorney to 'sandbag' would be awfully short-sighted (and might itself support a claim of ineffectiveness) because the odds for getting a single juror to vote against death would always seem greater than to get an appellate court to reverse a death sentence after imposed by a jury. And, of course, a jury verdict of life sticks, whereas any appellate reversal will likely lead to another capital trial."
But see Buck v Thaler.
Posted by: federalist | Jul 21, 2023 12:29:54 PM
There is plenty to be cynical about the capital realm, Master Tarls, I just do not think defense lawyer sandbagging is a significant concern. My cynicism relates to home much time, money and energy gets wasted trying to figuring out which of the very worst murderers are going to die a bit sooner.
Posted by: Doug B | Jul 21, 2023 12:42:34 PM
My experience -- both in regular criminal cases and in a handful of capital cases -- is that there are always two or three viable defense strategies.
For the past several years, I have been involved in a case in which the theory at trial (and it still is) was that defendant was not there. If I were the defense attorney, I probably would have (assuming that I could convince my client to stop claiming that he was not there) gone with a self-defense claim. But the two theories are clearly incompatible and the defense had to make a choice (in consultation with the client).
I know in a case I worked on in which the defendant was just executed that the strategy at trial was to emphasize the father's absence from the defendant's life. In the IAC case, the alternative theory was that the defense should have called dad to testify about his efforts to be involved and how the problem was really mom. (Given that defendant was facing the death penalty for killing two jail guards to help a friend escape, I don't think any defense would have made a difference.)
Because, with rare exceptions, the choice of which strategy to pursue is a judgment call that qualifies as a reasonable trial strategy, these claims almost always fail. But in trying to explain to the public why the representation was inept, it is easy to spin the facts to make the new strategy seem like it was the obvious and only reasonable strategy.
There are certainly capital defense attorneys who will "fall on the sword" and claim that they were inept in not pursuing the alternative strategy, but I have faced these attorneys in court, and they are nothing if not thorough. The bigger issue than sandbagging is the filing of multiple motions that are clearly meritless under current law and the making of meritless objections at trial for the sole purpose of preserving them for review on the off chance that one day a court might change the law.
Posted by: tmm | Jul 21, 2023 1:32:53 PM
tmm, but see Buck v Thaler
Posted by: federalist | Jul 25, 2023 4:21:51 PM
