Death row inmate Jemaine Cannon was executed in Oklahoma on Thursday for fatally stabbing a woman with a butcher knife after his escape from a prison work center in 1995.
Cannon received the lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester just after 10 a.m. He was pronounced dead 12 minutes later, marking the state’s second execution this year and the ninth since it resumed lethal injections in 2021.
In his final moments, Cannon expressed his belief in God and the power of his forgiveness: “Yes, I confess with my mouth and believe in my heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. Therefore I am saved. Thank you.”
A Tulsa grand jury previously convicted Cannon and sentenced him to death for the brutal slaying of 20-year-old mother, Sharonda Clark, with whom he’d been sharing an apartment in Tulsa.
Her body was discovered Feb. 5, 1995. She was reported missing after she failed to pick her children up from a daycare center.
Just weeks before Clark’s death, Cannon escaped from a prison work center in southwest Oklahoma. He’d been serving a 15-year sentence for the violent assault of another woman. The victim was left with permanent injuries after Clark raped and then brutally beat her with items including a claw hammer, iron and kitchen toaster.
Cannon’s execution came after a federal appeals court late Wednesday denied a last-minute appeal seeking a stay of execution. It contended Cannon, as a Native American, in not subject to Oklahoma jurisdiction. In June, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 against recommending clemency for Cannon.
There, he argued that he killed Clark in self-defense after they got into a disagreement.
“Justice was finally served this morning for Sharonda Clark with the execution of her murderer,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement. “My hope is that today’s action can bring some measure of peace for Sharonda’s two daughters, as well as her other family members and friends who loved her.”
With News Wire Services