Murderer who killed two males in drive-by capturing set to be second US execution this yr | EUROtoday

A person who killed two males in a drive-by capturing after a nightclub altercation is about to be the primary execution of the yr in Oklahoma and the second within the United States.

Kendrick Simpson, 45, was scheduled to obtain a deadly injection on the Oklahoma State Penitentiary for his convictions within the 2006 killings of 19-year-old Anthony Jones and 20-year-old Glen Palmer, who had been fatally shot after a dispute at an Oklahoma City membership.

Simpson, who had fled to Oklahoma City from the devastated metropolis of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, admitted to the killings throughout a clemency listening to final month. He apologized to the victims’ households and to a 3rd man who was within the automobile when Jones and Palmer had been shot.

“I apologize for murdering your sons,” Simpson mentioned on the listening to. “I don’t make any excuses. I don’t blame others, and they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”

Despite his apology, the state’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board narrowly voted to disclaim Simpson clemency.

And on Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court had no remark because it rejected a late attraction to dam the execution.

Simpson’s attorneys had argued that he suffered from posttraumatic stress dysfunction stemming from power trauma in his childhood years rising up in a New Orleans housing challenge.

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“Kendrick is a man worthy of your mercy and compassion,” his attorneys wrote in his clemency software. “The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst offenses and offenders. Kendrick and his case represent neither.”

On the night time of the killing in January 2006, prosecutors say, Simpson had positioned an assault rifle within the trunk of a automobile that he and his associates drove to a membership in northwest Oklahoma City.

After an altercation on the membership between Simpson and Palmer, prosecutors say Simpson and his associates adopted Palmer and Jones from a close-by gasoline station and that Simpson pointed the gun out the window and fired about 20 rounds into their automobile. Both victims had been shot a number of occasions.

Some of the victims’ relations instructed the board they supported his execution.

“Do I believe this man should live and be able to breathe and take out the rest of his life behind a cell?” Palmer’s sister, Crystal Allison, wrote in a letter to the panel.

“He made the choice for him so I stand here today to make the choice for my family. Yes, we would like to see him executed for what he did — he executed my brother.”

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Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond recommended the board for denying Simpson clemency, calling him a “ruthless and violent killer who hunted his victims without remorse.”

The state makes use of the sedative midazolam, adopted by vecuronium bromide to halt the respiration and potassium chloride to cease the center.

Simpson’s scheduled execution was to be the second of the yr within the United States. Florida, which performed a state report of 19 executions in 2025, put Ronald Palmer Heath to loss of life with a three-drug injection on Tuesday for his conviction within the 1989 killing of a touring salesman he and his brother met at a Gainesville bar.

A complete of 47 folks had been executed within the U.S. in 2025 with Florida main the way in which with a flurry of loss of life warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second place with 5 executions every that yr.

Florida is scheduled to hold out the following execution within the U.S. on Tuesday, the deliberate deadly injection of Melvin Trotter for the killing of a grocery retailer proprietor throughout a theft.