Supreme Court denies stay for Oklahoma death row inmates

Jan. 26—An Oklahoma death row inmate is set for lethal injection Thursday after the nation's top court denied his emergency stay.

Donald Grant is scheduled to die at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester after the U.S. Supreme Court denied an emergency stay application filed by attorneys for Grant and Gilbert Postelle, another death row inmate set for lethal injection Feb. 17.

Grant, 46, received the death sentence for killing two Del City hotel workers in a 2001 robbery he admittedly committed to bail a girlfriend out of jail.

Oklahoma's parole board members were told in a November clemency hearing that hotel manager Brenda McElyea begged for her life in July 2001 before Grant fatally shot her.

Grant then shot desk clerk Suzette Smith three times in the face, but when she didn't die, he cut her throat and hit her head with his gun and other objects.

Defense attorneys told the board Grant was diagnosed with schizophrenia and asked them to recommend clemency. Grant apologized for his actions to the parole board.

Grant told the parole board he didn't know who was in the hotel when he went there, but knew someone there when he arrived. A board member asked Grant if that was his reason for killing the women, to which Grant admitted before he blamed his actions on the devil.

“Yes…in my mind — but not in my rightful mind, in my wrongful mind,” Grant told board members, referring to the devil talking to him.

The parole board rejected Grant's clemency with a 4-1 vote. Gov. Kevin Stitt can't commute a death row inmate's sentence without the board's recommendation for clemency.

Attorneys for Grant and Postelle filed an emergency application for stay of execution to ask the Supreme Court to stop the executions earlier this week. Postelle received the death sentence for his role in the 2005 shooting deaths of four people near Oklahoma City.

The request came after U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot declined to temporarily halt their executions last week. Friot denied the motion after hearing nearly 10 hours of argument during a Jan. 10 hearing and writing the inmates weren't likely to succeed on claims that the state's three-drug lethal injection protocol subjects inmates to unconstitutional pain and suffering.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled Monday against issuing stays for the two upcoming executions. Appellate judges wrote the two men “failed to show the district court's factual findings were clearly erroneous, or that the district court committed legal error in reaching its conclusions.”

Defense attorneys argued midazolam — one part of Oklahoma's three-drug lethal injection protocol — is not appropriate for use in the procedure.

Oklahoma resumed lethal injections of death row inmates in October 2021 using the same three-drug mixture it used in a series of problematic executions that led to a moratorium in 2015.

Attorneys argued Oklahoma's lethal injection of John Grant on Oct. 28, 2021 subjected him “to severe pain and suffering over an extended period of time.”

Media witnesses said John Grant convulsed nearly two dozen times during his execution and prison officials wiped vomit from his face before he was pronounced dead.

Friot wrote that previous arguments show John Grant drank soda and ate chips within an hour of his scheduled execution.

Dr. Ervin Yen, an Oklahoma City anesthesiologist who witnessed John Grant's execution, testified vomiting was expected from someone “who has a significant amount of food and fluid in his stomach, is strapped down supine on a gurney and injected with a drug which quickly produces unconsciousness.” Yen also testified the convulsions indicated an obstructed airway and were not purposeful.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Cohen did not witness the execution but performed an autopsy on John Grant and concluded that the inmate more than likely “experienced conscious pain and suffering.”

“The persuasive value of this conclusion by Dr. Cohen is questionable when viewed in the light of the fact that Dr. Cohen did not observe the (John) Grant execution, has no experience with midazolam, and did not review the declaration of Dr. Yen,” Friot wrote in his ruling.