Category Archives: Oklahoma

Oklahoma lawmakers urge pause amid fears innocent man to be executed

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Bipartisan group calls for new hearing over lack of evidence in case of Richard Glossip, 59, as state rushes to speed up executions

A letter signed by 61 Oklahoma lawmakers – most of them pro-death penalty Republicans – has been sent to the state’s attorney general calling for a new hearing in the case of Richard Glossip, a death row inmate scheduled to be executed next month.

Forty-four Republican and 17 Democratic legislators, amounting to more than a third of the state assembly, have written to John O’Connor pleading for the new hearing.

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Oklahoma to execute death row prisoners nearly every month

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State set execution dates on Friday for six inmates and plans for executions to take place about once a month through 2024

Oklahoma is planning to execute a prisoner on death row nearly every month starting in August through 2024 in a move that is likely to cause outrage among opponents of the death penalty.

The Oklahoma court of criminal appeals set the execution dates on Friday for six inmates, who have all exhausted their appeals, and plans for executions to take place about once a month. The inmates’ capital punishments were on hold because of a lawsuit over botched lethal injections, which led to a more than five-year execution moratorium.

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Tulsa hospital shooting: number of wounded not known after four killed

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Gunman also dead, police deputy chief says, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound

A gunman carrying a rifle and a handgun killed four people on Wednesday at a medical building on a hospital campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, police said, detailing the latest in a series of mass shootings across the US. The number of wounded was not known.

The Tulsa police deputy chief, Eric Dalgleish, said the gunman also was dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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Oklahoma Republican-led legislature passes nation’s strictest abortion ban

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Bill bans abortion at conception and if signed into law it would allow citizens to sue anyone who ‘aids or abets’ a patient

Oklahoma’s Republican-led legislature passed the nation’s strictest abortion ban on Thursday. The bill, if signed into law, would allows citizens to sue anyone, anywhere who “aids or abets” a patient in terminating a pregnancy.

The bill bans abortion from conception, even before an egg implants in the uterus, and would go into effect immediately if signed by Republican governor, Kevin Stitt. Abortion providers expect he will do so before the coming week.

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Statue of Native American ballerina destroyed and sold to recycling center

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Outcry after thieves in Oklahoma chopped statue of Marjorie Tallchief into pieces and sold parts to recycling center for $250

Thieves have destroyed a statue of a Native American ballerina and sold the broken parts to a recycling center in Oklahoma for about $250.

Last week, thieves chopped the statue of Marjorie Tallchief into pieces, prompting outcry among residents in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tallchief was an American ballerina, primarily in the 1940s and 50s, and a member of the Osage Nation.

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Republican can’t list himself as ‘The Patriot’ on ballot, state rules

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State lawmaker claims it’s his nickname – but he struggles to spell it and opponent says he doesn’t use it

A state Republican lawmaker who wanted to refer to himself as “The Patriot” on the ballot can’t use that nickname, the Oklahoma Election Board has ruled.

Sean Roberts can still run for Oklahoma labor commissioner, but he can’t refer to himself using that nickname on the ballot, the board decided Monday.

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Scott Pruitt, Trump’s scandal-ridden environment chief, to run for US Senate

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Former EPA administrator is seeking seat being vacated by Republican senator Jim Inhofe in Oklahoma

Scott Pruitt, who had a scandal-ridden spell in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency under Donald Trump, filed on Friday to run for an open US Senate seat in Oklahoma.

Pruitt, 53, a former state senator and Oklahoma attorney general, is seeking the seat being vacated by the longtime Republican senator Jim Inhofe.

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Tornado hits New Orleans causing damage, power outages and reports of one death

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Tornado occurred as major storm system tore through parts of the US south, killing another person in Texas and injuring more than two dozen

A large tornado touched down in New Orleans on Tuesday evening, causing damage and destruction to the city’s lower ninth ward, before traveling east into the neighboring parish of St Bernard, where officials reported multiple injuries and one death.

The tornado occurred as a major storm system continued to tear through parts of the US south, killing another person in Texas and injuring more than two dozen.

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Texas wildfires: approaching storm could bring rain but also high winds

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Fires have caused two deaths, including one in Oklahoma, as largest blaze is 30% contained after burning nearly 85 square miles

Wildfires continued to scorch parts of Texas on Monday while a storm system moving through could bring much-needed rain but also strong winds, forecasters said.

The Eastland Complex, which comprises several fires in one place, had burned nearly 85 square miles in an area about 120 miles west of Dallas and was 30% contained as of Monday morning.

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Oklahoma pastor faces criticism for rubbing spit on parishioner’s face

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Michael Todd spat into his hand twice, and audience gasped when he rubbed his hands on his brother’s face

A pastor from a megachurch in Tulsa, Oklahoma, faced a wave of criticism online over video of him rubbing spit on a worshipper’s face.

During a sermon on Sunday, Michael Todd, a 34-year-old lead pastor at Transformation church, spat into his hand twice.

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‘The testing ground’: how Republican state parties grow Trumpism 2.0

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In Oklahoma, Idaho, Wyoming and California, the next generation of GOP extremists are passing laws, picking their own voters … and preparing for power

The website of the Oklahoma Republican party has a running countdown to the 2024 presidential election measured in “Maga days”, “Maga hours”, “Maga minutes” and “Maga seconds” – Maga being shorthand for Donald Trump’s timeworn slogan, “Make America great again”.

The state party chairman, John Bennett, a veteran of three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has described Islam as a “cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out” and posted a yellow Star of David on Facebook to liken coronavirus vaccine mandates to the persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.

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Protesters react with joy as governor grants Julius Jones clemency – video

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Supporters of Julius Jones celebrated outside Oklahoma’s capitol building as news broke that the governor of Oklahoma had granted clemency to the death row inmate, hours before he was due to be executed. Protesters had gathered to demand the state commute Jones’s death sentence to life imprisonment. Jones has been on death row since he was convicted of the murder of businessman Paul Howell in 1999. He has always maintained his innocence

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Protests mount as Oklahoma prepares to execute Julius Jones

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Jones, who has maintained his innocence for more than two decades, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Thursday

Students at high schools across Oklahoma City walked out of their classes. Prayer vigils were held at the state Capitol, and barricades were erected outside the governor’s mansion. Even Baker Mayfield, quarterback for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns, weighed in on Oklahoma’s highest-profile execution in decades.

Julius Jones, 41, who has maintained his innocence for more than two decades, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Thursday at the state penitentiary in McAlester for the 1999 slaying of Paul Howell, a businessman in the affluent Oklahoma City suburb of Edmond.

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Tulsa race massacre: 19 bodies reinterred as protesters demand criminal investigation

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  • Bullet found with one set of remains that showed trauma
  • Anthropologist tells crowd: ‘We are not done’

The bodies of 19 people exhumed from an Oklahoma cemetery during a search for victims of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre were reburied in a closed ceremony on Friday, despite objections from protesters outside the cemetery.

Related: ‘I work with the dead. But this can help the living’: the anthropologist investigating the Tulsa race massacre

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‘Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around’: reverend sings with Tulsa race massacre survivors – video

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Rev Dr William J Barber II sang 'Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around' with the three living survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre at the Greenwood Cultural Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Tuesday, after Joe Biden gave a speech honouring the anniversary. Biden became the first sitting US president to visit the site where hundreds of Black Americans were massacred by a white mob in 1921, as he marked the country's legacy of racial violence

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‘This was a massacre’: Biden honours Tulsa race massacre survivors 100 years on – video

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Joe Biden on Tuesday became the first sitting US president to visit the site in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where hundreds of Black Americans were massacred by a white mob in 1921, as he marked the country’s legacy of racial violence. 

Biden oversaw a moment of silence for the victims after meeting with three people who lived in the district during the massacre: Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis and Lessie Benningfield Randle. 

Now between the ages of 101 and 107, the survivors who met Biden asked Congress for ‘justice’ this year and are parties to a lawsuit against state and local officials seeking several remedies for the massacre, including a victim compensation fund

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‘The loss is incalculable’: Descendants of the Tulsa massacre on what was stolen from them

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For many descendants, the past is still present. They explain how the legacy of the massacre, which was suppressed for so long, lives on today

Earlier this month, the three known survivors of the 1921 Tulsa massacre testified in Congress about the world they lost when a white mob burned their thriving community to the ground. “The neighborhood I fell asleep in that night was rich – not just in terms of wealth, but in culture, community and heritage,” said Viola Fletcher, who was visiting the US capital for the first time in her 107 years. “Within a few hours, all of that was gone.”

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‘They didn’t talk about it’: how a historian helped Tulsa confront the horror of its past

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In 1921, a white mob attacked Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, killing an estimated 300 people, but it wasn’t talked about until recently

There was no memorial to it in town. Teachers made no mention of it, not even during a half-semester devoted to local history. The white schoolboy Scott Ellsworth of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was left to wonder what the city’s darkest secret could be.

Related: The Ground Breaking review: indispensable history of the Tulsa Race Massacre

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High school announcer caught by hot mic blames racist outburst on high blood sugar

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  • Announcer used racial slur for girls’ team who knelt for anthem
  • Incident happened before Oklahoma high school playoff game
  • Broadcaster blames racist comments on diabetes in statement

An announcer for a live stream of an Oklahoma girls’ high school basketball game cursed and called one team by a racial epithet as the players knelt during the national anthem, then suggested his diabetes was to blame for the episode in a statement expressing his regret.

The incident occurred Thursday before the Norman High School-Midwest City quarter-final game in Sapulpa as the Star-Spangled Banner began to play. The broadcasters told their listeners on the NFHS Network stream they would return after a break and then one, apparently not realizing the audio was still live, used an expletive and the epithet as the Norman players knelt.

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New owners of Tiger King zoo ordered to turn over lion and tiger cubs

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Judge orders Oklahoma zoo featured in hit Netflix series to surrender cats and their mothers for violating animal welfare laws

A federal judge in Oklahoma has ordered the new owners of an Oklahoma zoo featured in Netflix’s Tiger King documentary to turn over all the lion and tiger cubs in their possession, along with the animals’ mothers, to the federal government.

Related: 'It's pretty messed up': Americans’ deadly love for tigers

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