Welcome To the OCADP Website
Devoted to Abolishing Capital Punishment
Oklahoma Coalition Against the Death Penalty is a grassroots membership organization working to end the death penalty in Oklahoma. We are a statewide organization which engages in outreach, education, and advocacy aimed at raising awareness of issues related to the death penalty and mobilizing Oklahoma citizens - and their elected officials - to support abolition of the death penalty. We invite all concerned citizens, groups, and organizations to join our growing movement.
The United States is moving away from the death penalty because of growing concerns about innocence, unfairness, discriminatory application, lack of efficacy and other reasons, including the ways the death penalty causes more pain for the survivors of homicide victims. These concerns have led to an eight year decline in death sentences nationwide. In 2007, the number of defendants who received a death sentence was at its lowest point since the death penalty was upheld in 1976.
Our Approach
“The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause is stronger than all the hosts of error.”
--William Jennings Bryan
We believe that the struggle against the death penalty will be won state by state when good people of all walks of life demand change. As the public comes to understand that the death penalty operates unfairly, harms the very people it purports to help and drains precious resources from solutions that prevent crime, hold people accountable and keep our communities safe, more will demand that policy makers support measures to narrow the scope and reach of the practice and ultimately repeal death penalty statutes.
Capital punishment harmful for families of victims
Oklahoman 
0
Published: August 27, 2010
Regarding “Federal judge issues stay of execution for
Oklahoma death row inmate” (news story, Aug. 18): I extend my sympathies to the families of
Otis Short and
Jeffrey Matthews, who faces execution for the murder of Short, his great uncle. I understand their hurt. My daughter,
Julie Marie Welch, died in the 1995
Oklahoma City bombing. My anger and pain was like no other. I wanted nothing more than the perpetrators’ execution. But I remembered a conversation with Julie some time before she was killed. She said that killing people who kill solves nothing.
I subsequently met Timothy McVeigh's father. He and I found we had in common our love for our children and grief over losing my daughter and his son. In my work sharing Julie's memory around the world, I've met many people close to the death penalty. I know firsthand the harm it causes to the family members of murder victims and those facing execution; to the prison personnel conducting executions; and to our communities still victimized by homicides because capital punishment doesn't deter them.
It's particularly disturbing that capital punishment has few protections against wrongful executions. In recent years, 10 Oklahomans were freed from death row by evidence that proved them innocent. If no evidence links Matthews to his great uncle's murder, every precaution must be taken so Matthews is not mistakenly executed and the anguish of both families over their loved one's murder isn't compounded by Matthews' wrongful death.
Bud Welch, Oklahoma City
Welch is a member of the board of directors of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Letter to the Editor: Execution questioned
By Martha Kendall Holmes, Oklahoma City
Published: 8/28/2010 2:18 AM
Last Modified: 8/28/2010 2:18 AM
The federal judge who stayed Jeffrey Matthews' scheduled Aug. 17 execution because of Matthews' attorneys' concern about substituting one of the sedation drugs in the three-drug lethal injection protocol, did the right thing. ("Death-row inmate gets third stay hours before execution," Aug. 18). Brevital is an experimental sedative, never before used in an execution. There has been a high incidence of botched executions in many death-penalty states. Prisoners who were supposed to be rendered unconscious by the first drug were instead awake, paralyzed, in excruciating pain, and unable to scream. Oklahoma prison officials should not have been willing to risk subjecting Matthews - or any prisoner - to such horror with an untested drug.
Additionally, there is the strong possibility of Matthews' innocence. Gov. Brad Henry twice stayed Matthews' execution to give his attorneys time to explore innocence claims. There is no evidence linking Matthews to his great-uncle Otis Earl Short's murder. Tracy Dyer, another defendant in the robbery in which Short was murdered, retracted his initial testimony implicating Matthews. Dyer said guards had coerced him to testifying against Matthews. Additionally, a former police officer familiar with the case called its investigation "sloppy" and suspicious."
Since 1973, 138 people have been exonerated from death rows nationwide when DNA or other evidence proved them innocent. Ten of those exonerated are Oklahomans. There are many reasons why the death penalty must be abolished. The lack of safeguards against wrongful convictions and executions is one of them.
Editor's note: Holmes is chairwoman of the board of directors of Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
