Deeply Rooted: How Racial History Informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty

By Death Penalty Information Center, on 14 October 2022

These individual cases illustrate issues found in systemic reviews of the state’s death penalty system. In 2017, a bipartisan commission that included former prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, citizens, crime victim advocates, and law professors found that the state’s capital punishment system created “unacceptable risks of inconsistent, discriminatory, and inhumane application of the death penalty.” In an extensively researched report, the commission recommended a moratorium on executions until reforms were made. Five years later, Oklahoma has enacted “virtually none” of the suggested reforms.

• Document type Article
• Countries list United States