Double murderer’s unusual last meal before receiving lethal injection
A convicted killer refused a last meal before he was executed for murdering two women.
Death row inmates usually take the last chance to dig into their favourite food – whether it’s KFC, mint ice cream or lobster tail – after years on canteen grub.
But Michael Dewayne Smith, 41, broke with convention in the hours before he was given a lethal injection at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester this morning.
Instead the vegetarian ‘ate some of his remaining canteen items’, an Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesperson told Metro.co.uk.
Smith spent more than 20 years on death row after he was convicted of shooting Janet Moore, 41, and Sharath Pulluru, 22, in February 2002.
He killed his victims in misguided acts of revenge, according to prosecutors.
They claim the gang member killed Ms Moore while looking for her son, who he believed had told police about his whereabouts.
He killed convenience store clerk Ms Pulluru later that day, believing she had disrespected his gang during an interview with a newspaper reported, they said.
But Smith continued pleading his innocence up to his death, despite confessing his involvement in their deaths to police and two other people.
His lawyer, Mark Henricksen, claimed his client’s confession to police was given under the influence of a drug called PCP, and that key elements of his confession are not backed up by the evidence.
Smith claimed he had been too ‘high on drugs’ to ‘even remember getting arrested’, when he spoke at a clemency hearing last month.
Occasionally breaking into tears, Smith expressed his ‘deepest sorrows’ to the victims’ families, but denied his involvement.
During the 15-minute address to the board, he said: ‘I didn’t commit these crimes. I didn’t kill these people.’
Mr Henricksen said Smith had an intellectual disability made worse by years of heavy drug use.
He argued Smith’s life should be spared, with the rest of it spent in prison.
The board denied Smith clemency by a vote of four to one.
Smith’s lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court for a stay of execution, but this was denied on Thursday morning.
He was executed by lethal injection the same day and was pronounced dead at 10.20am.
Smith was the first person executed in the US state this year, and the 12th since Oklahoma resumed executions in 2021.
Once of the most prolific executioners in the US, Oklahoma took a nearly seven-year hiatus as death row inmates launched a constitutional challenge after a series of botched lethal injections.
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