John Marion Grant

John Marion Grant (died 28 October 2021) was an American murderer and the first person to be executed in Oklahoma since Charles Warner in 2015.

Biography

Grant grew up in poverty in an Oklahoma City housing project. The child of a single mother, he often stole to provide for his eight siblings, and first entered the state penal system when he was just a teenager, where his attorneys say he endured frequent abuse. He committed multiple armed robberies after his release, for which he received a 130 year prison sentence.

In 1998, while serving his sentence, Grant got into an argument with prison worker Gay Carter, dragged her into a mop closet and stabbed her to death with a homemade shank. He was arrested on suspicion of murder, and confessed. His defence at trial was to claim that the murder was a result of his poor mental health and he had been going through emotional turmoil at the time. He was convicted and sentenced to death.

An appeal against his death sentence was lodged in 2021 on the grounds that the jury at his trial had not been informed of his poor childhood, which was supposedly responsible for his mental health issues. He also joined in a Supreme Court lawsuit against the State of Oklahoma on the grounds that the drug used in lethal injection caused needlessly painful deaths. A stay of execution was placed on all inmates involved, but Grant and six others had their stays lifted after being removed from the lawsuit because they did not name an alternative method of execution. Grant's appeal was also rejected; the Oklahoma State Clemency Board recommended that his sentence be commuted but this recommendation was not binding and Governor Kevin Stitt ignored it.

Grant was executed by lethal injection on 28 October 2021. Reportedly he took 15 minutes to pass out, during which he swore repeatedly and vomited.