“A year after one of the biggest pro-life victories in the country, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the state of Oklahoma is imposing the death penalty on Jemaine Cannon,” Coakley said.
“This archaic punishment deprives the condemned of their inherent human dignity and is fundamentally at odds with the culture of life the State of Oklahoma proclaims to be building,” he said. “The sanctity of life does not disappear after the commission of a crime — even a heinous one.”
“I implore all people of goodwill to join me in advocating for an end to the death penalty in Oklahoma and instead working toward actual justice that respects human dignity and prioritizes healing the wounds of grief and loss,” Coakley said.
Cannon’s victim was Sharonda Clark, a 20-year-old mother of two when Clark stabbed her to death with a butcher knife in February 1995. Police discovered her body after she failed to pick up her children from daycare and a relative reported her missing, the Tulsa television show News on 6 reported.
Cannon had been staying at Clark’s Tulsa apartment after his escape from an Oklahoma prison work center where he had been serving a 15-year sentence for the violent assault on another woman who was permanently injured in the attack. Prosecutors said Cannon raped his previous victim and beat her viciously with a claw hammer, an iron, and a kitchen toaster, the Associated Press reported.