In a switch up, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals is now being asked to schedule an execution for a Hurricane Katrina evacuee who fatally shot two men in 2006.
Kendrick Antonio Simpson, 44, was sentenced to death in Oklahoma County District Court in 2007 for both murders. He had relocated to Oklahoma after the hurricane hit New Orleans in 2005.
The last execution in Oklahoma was carried out June 12 at the penitentiary in McAlester. Up next is death row inmate Tremane Wood.
In an Aug. 22 notice, Attorney General Gentner Drummond asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to set Simpson’s execution instead. He suggested Oct. 30 for the date.
The switch up came after Wood’s attorneys revealed they can no longer represent him because of a conflict.
Wood’s new attorneys will presumably be unfamiliar with his case and require time to prepare for clemency proceedings, Drummond told the court.
Wood’s execution has not been set yet by the court. The AG at first asked for Sept. 11. He then asked for the execution to be set in October, four weeks later.
Drummond made the request after the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation began looking into accusations about Wood. The accusations have not been made public yet. Wood’s attorneys began steps to withdraw from the case after learning of the accusations.
Wood was sentenced to death for the fatal stabbing of a migrant farm worker from Montana during a robbery at an Oklahoma City motel on Jan. 1, 2002.
Wood, 45, was caught with cellphones on May 8, June 26 and June 30, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has said. On June 26, he was moved back to H Unit, the penitentiary’s most restrictive area.
What did Simpson do?
Simpson fired an assault rifle from the front passenger seat of a car at three men in another car after a confrontation early Jan. 16, 2006, inside Fritzi’s, a hip hop club in Oklahoma City.
Afterward, he said, “I’m a monster. I just shot the car up,” the Court of Criminal Appeals noted in its 2010 opinion upholding his conviction. He added, “They shouldn’t play with me like that.”
Killed were Glen Palmer, 20, and Anthony Jones, 19.
A former jail cellmate testified for the prosecution at trial that Simpson “had shown no remorse for his actions and had even laughed about the crime and wanted to kill and threaten potential witnesses,” according to the opinion.
Simpson does not dispute that he was the shooter. His attorneys plan to ask the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board for mercy because of a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis.
A Tulane University professor of clinical psychiatry who examined him in 2011 reported the most severe traumatic stress occurred in November 2004 when Simpson was shot five times in a drive-by shooting in New Orleans.
“Then as he recovered from his wounds he lost his neighborhood and social support system to Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005,” the professor wrote.
Gov. Kevin Stitt has the final say on clemency, but only if the board recommends it. He cannot act if the board doesn’t.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Hurricane Katrina evacuee could be executed in Oklahoma in October
