James Coddington is on death row in Oklahoma for the murder of a friend. A commission advocates sparing the life of the 50-year-old. But the governor of the US state is ignoring the recommendation.
A convicted murderer has been executed in the US state of Oklahoma. James Coddington, 50, was killed by lethal injection at the McAlester City Jail on Thursday, the Corrections Authority said. The execution went without incident.
The state Board of Pardons and Pardons previously recommended that Coddington be pardoned. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt rejected the clemency plea Wednesday.
Coddington was sentenced to death for killing a friend with a hammer in 1997. He killed 73-year-old Albert Hale after Hale refused to give him money for cocaine. After the murder, he committed at least six more armed robberies.
During a parole board hearing earlier this month, Coddington apologized to Hale’s family. His attorney said his client was marred by years of alcohol and drug abuse that began in infancy, when his father was putting beer and whiskey in his baby’s bottle. The victim’s son said during the trial: “I forgive him, but that doesn’t relieve him of the consequences of his actions.”
Coddington’s execution was the third execution of a death sentence in Oklahoma this year and the tenth in the United States. Executions in Oklahoma were suspended in 2015 because of serious lethal injection problems. The conservative state then began carrying out death sentences again last year. Coddington is the fifth death row inmate to have been executed since.
