Clemency for death row inmate Jemaine Cannon was denied on Wednesday.
Cannon went before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board on Wednesday, presenting his evidence that he murdered a woman as an act of self-defense.
The board denied Cannon clemency with a vote of 3-2.
In 1995, Cannon was convicted of murdering Sharonda Clark in her Tulsa apartment. He was sentenced to death row in 1996.
Cannon's lawyer, Mark Henrickson, said that Cannon's legal team during the murder trial failed him by not submitting evidence that would prove Cannon's claim of self-defense.
"He wanted to present his self-defense presentation, his explanation, and his public defenders declined to permit him to do that," said Henrickson. "You have the right to testify, you should listen to the advice of your lawyer, but at the end of the day, it is your decision. That did not happen in this case."
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond voiced his approval in the Pardon and Parole Board's decision to deny clemency to Cannon, saying in a statement:
I am pleased the Pardon and Parole Board denied clemency for the monster who brutally murdered Sharonda Clark and deprived her two young children of their mother. Justice will be served when the death penalty is carried out July 20.
The Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (OK-CADP) issued a statement, saying that the Board's decision is cruel:
We have a serious problem with the composition of the Pardon and Parole Board. Three former District Attorneys voted No today to clemency for Jemaine Cannon. The two other members of the [Board] voted Yes. We had the same split in the previous two clemency hearings.
Jemaine Cannon was physically abused by his mother and stepfather over his entire childhood. He suffers from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Cannon told a police investigator that he just snapped. The district attorneys are unable to recognize the vulnerability of the men that come before them.
It is a failure of imagination. It is hard for anyone who grew up in middle-class homes with stable and loving parents to imagine the trauma these men suffered as children and the role it played in their violent lives. We cannot imagine how a normal human being could act that way.
For the State to kill him is not justice, it is cruelty.
Since Cannon was not granted clemency, he remains slated to be executed on July 20, 2023.
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