Anthony Sanchezaged 44, sentenced to death, whose execution is scheduled for this coming September, plans to turn down his chance to plead for clemency with Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, andbecause he considers that he has little chance of getting her to spare his life.
The Hispanic was sentenced to death for raping and killing 21-year-old Juli Busken, a dance student at the University of Oklahoma in 1996.
“I have sat in my cell and I have seen inmate after inmate ask for clemency and they are denied clemency… Either way, the inmates are not doing well,” Sánchez declared in an interview with the AP agency.
Sanchez commented that even if all five members of the Board of Pardons and Paroles vote in favor of clemency, it is unlikely that Governor Stitt will grant it.
That is why the Hispanic is willing to serve his sentence and be executed next September.
As an argument for his decision, he cited the cases of Bigler Stouffer and James Coddington, who managed to get the Board of Pardons and Paroles to vote in their favour, but clemency was rejected by Governor Stitt.
“They came out and poured their hearts out, man…”Why would I want to be a part of something like that, if you’re going to sit there and get these guys excited?” Sanchez told the news agency.
Governor Stitt commuted Julius Jones’ death sentence to life without parole in 2021 after several celebrities advocated for him.
But Sánchez remains firm in not asking Stitt for clemency, despite insisting that he is innocent, and that the person responsible for the murder of the University of Oklahoma student was her father Thomás Sánchez, but the Court of Appeals rejected his request. for a new evidentiary hearing.
The victim was kidnapped on December 20, 1996, her body was found the same day, the autopsy revealed that she was raped and shot in the head.
The crime was under investigation for several years. But after a series of tests, it was possible to recover the DNA from the student’s clothes and Anthony Sánchez was linked to the crime, for which he was sentenced in 2006 to the death penalty for rape and murder.
Given this result, a group of activists against the death penalty hired a private investigator who indicated that the DNA evidence against Anthony Sánchez could have been contaminated, but Tim Kuykendall, former Cleveland County district attorney, assured that there was other evidence against him. Hispanic.
Kuykendall said the evidence included ballistics evidence and a shoe print.
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