Oklahoma executed a man Thrusday for fatally shooting a woman 20 years ago during a home invasion and robbery.
Wendell Grissom, the death row inmate, received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. A prison official told the Associated Press that Grissom, 56, was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. It was the first execution in Oklahoma this year and the ninth in the United States. Six were carried out by lethal injection, two by nitrogen gas and one by firing squad.
Grissom and a co-defendant, Jessie Floyd Johns, were convicted of killing of Amber Matthews, 23, and wounding her friend, Dreu Kopf, at Kopf’s Blaine County residence in 2005. Johns was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
“I apologize to all of you that I’ve hurt,” Grissom said while strapped to the gurney, an IV line affixed to his right arm. “I regret so much that I’ve put that hatred in your heart for me.”
A minister prayed at Grissom’s feet as the lethal drugs began to flow. He exhaled forcefully several times and could be heard snoring when a doctor entered the execution chamber and declared him unconscious about five minutes later. He appeared to stop breathing at 10:09 a.m. and the color started to drain from his face.
More than two dozen of Matthews’ friends and family witnessed Grissom’s execution.
Prosecutors said Grissom, who had a lengthy criminal record, picked up Johns, who was hitchhiking, and the two men were driving west on Interstate 40 when they decided to commit robberies. They randomly selected Kopf’s home near Watonga, where Matthews was visiting Kopf and her two young children.
Matthews was shot twice in the head and left clinging to life on the floor as Kopf, also shot twice and seriously wounded, managed to flee in Grissom’s truck to get help, prosecutors said. Grissom and Johns also fled, on a stolen four-wheeler, but quickly ran out of gas and were captured after hitching a ride to a cafe in a nearby county.
Authorities found Kopf’s children still inside the home, physically unhurt. Matthews died after being flown by helicopter to an Oklahoma City hospital.
Grissom’s attorneys did not dispute his guilt but argued at a clemency hearing that he suffered from brain damage that was never presented to a jury. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board denied Grissom’s request.
Grissom’s attorneys told the board he always accepted responsibility and wrote an apology to Matthews’ family during his first interview with police.
“He cannot change the past, but he is now and always has been deeply ashamed and remorseful,” said Kristi Christopher, an attorney with the federal public defender’s office.
Kopf told the board that she still carries deep mental and physical scars from the attack, including bullet fragments that remain in her body. She said that in the years since the attack she has called 911 when the doorbell rings unexpectedly or a stranger appears in her neighborhood.
“I lived in a heightened state of fear at all times,” she said tearfully.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has called Matthew’s killing a “textbook” death penalty case.
“The crimes committed by Grissom, random, brutal attacks on innocent strangers in the sanctity of their own home, are the very kind that keep people awake at night,” Drummond said during last month’s hearing.
Oklahoma’s approach to acquiring and administering lethal drugs has come under serious scrutiny in recent years, with the state corrections office previously accused of botching procedures inside the execution chamber and then facing an extensive public safety probe. The state was the first to authorize the controversial new execution method nitrogen hypoxia in 2015, but to date has never used it. Oklahoma uses a lethal injection cocktail that contains three drugs, beginning with a sedative and following with a second drug to paralyze the inmate and a third to stop the heart.
Oklahoma Department of Corrections via AP 
Before Grissom, the state last put an inmate to death by lethal injection in December.
Three other executions were scheduled this week around the United States: Louisiana put a man to death Tuesday using nitrogen gas for the first time as it resumed executions after a 15-year hiatus. A man who kidnapped and murdered his girlfriend’s ex-husband was executed by lethal injection Wednesday in Arizona. Another lethal injection is scheduled Thursday in Florida.
The lethal injection in December of Kevin Ray Underwood was the 127th execution by the state of Oklahoma since the U.S. reinstated the death penalty in 1976, state prison records show.
