OKLAHOMA EXECUTED A man by lethal injection today for fatally shooting a woman during a home invasion in 2005.

Wendell Grissom, 56, was sentenced to death for the murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews, who was shot in the head while trying to protect a friend’s two young daughters.

Grissom was pronounced dead 10 minutes after the execution process began at the state penitentiary in McAlester, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections said in a statement.

According to local news sources, Grissom did not seek any emergency stays in court, and did not appeal for a reduction in his sentence or a pardon. 

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in here,” he told reporters on Monday.

A photo of Wendell Grissom. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

According to court documents, Grissom, a truck driver, and another man, Jessie Johns, broke into the home of Dreu Kopf, a friend of Amber, with the intention of committing a robbery.

Amber was at the isolated home near Watonga helping Dreu Kopf pack for a move the next day.

Matthews was shot the first time in the back of the head while holding her friend’s newborn baby, Gracie. She was shot again in the forehead after collapsing to the floor.

Kopf was also shot, but survived.

Execution rates

A total of nine people have been executed in the US so far this year.

Three executions took place this week, with a fourth scheduled to take place in Florida later today. 

Edward James, 63, is to be executed by lethal injection for the 1993 rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl, Toni Neuner, and the murder of Betty Dick, 58, her grandmother.

Jessie Hoffman, 46, was put to death by nitrogen gas in the southern state of Louisiana on Tuesday.

Hoffman, who was convicted of the 1996 rape and murder of Molly Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive, was the first person executed in Louisiana in 15 years.

Only one other US state, Alabama, has carried out executions by nitrogen hypoxia, which involves pumping nitrogen gas into a facemask, causing the prisoner to suffocate.

The method has been denounced by UN experts as cruel and inhumane.

The death penalty is legal in over half of the states in the US (27), with temporary pauses in effect in four of these states.

A total of 1,615 people have been executed in the US in the last 49 years – an average of over 32 people annually.

Public opinion in the US on the death penalty leans in favour of outlawing the practice, with a 2019 poll showing a clear majority of voters (60%) would choose a punishment other than the death penalty for murder.

With additional reporting from AFP