Prayer Vigils for Scheduled Execution

On Thursday, October 28, 2021, John Marion Grant, age 60, is scheduled to be executed for the 1998 murder of Gay Carter, age 58. He will be the first death row inmate to be executed since Oklahoma ceased the practice in 2015 following a botched lethal injection execution. Six other inmates are set to be put to death in the coming months. Grant will also be the 113th state inmate executed since Oklahoma resumed capital punishment in 1990.

Barring a court ordered stay, a prayer vigil in peaceful opposition of the execution will held on October 28. It will begin at 3:00pm outside the front gate of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, where the sentence will take place. Prayers will be offered for both Carter and Grant, their families and the corrections officers taking part in the execution. The vigil is open to anyone wishing to participate.

Gay Carter worked as a clerk in the records office at the Dick Connor Correction Center in Hominy. Grant was an inmate at the prison serving a total of one-hundred thirty (130) years for four separate armed robberies. Prior to this sentence, he had been in and out of prison for some twenty years.

At the time of the murder, Carter was supervising inmates in the prison kitchen. She had previously removed Grant from his job in the kitchen for fighting with another inmate. On November 13, 1998, Grant pulled Carter into a mop closet and stabbed her sixteen times with a knife fashioned from a screw driver.

Grant was convicted of Carter’s murder in 2000 and sentenced to death. His appeals in both state and federal courts have been exhausted. On October 5, 2021, the State Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 against recommending clemency for Grant.

One of the board members who voted in favor of clemency sited Grant’s upbringing and alleged ill treatment in state institutions. At the age of twelve, Grant was placed in a juvenile facility for theft. At seventeen he was placed in an adult prison after a robbery conviction. All total, he has spent nearly forty years in prison.

Grant was originally scheduled to be executed in 2015. However, he, along with two other death row inmates, had their sentences put on hold. This happened after the discovery that the state was using the wrong drugs for lethal injections. A grand jury investigation concluded that negligence and failure of correction officers to follow protocols had happened for at least two previous executions.

In February 2020 state officials announced they had a reliable supply of drugs to carry out multiple executions. They also stated that proper safeguards and training of corrections officers were now in place.

Others prayer vigils are planned on October 28. They include;
 

• Oklahoma City - 3 pm - Holy Innocents’ Chapel, 6114 N.W. 63rd Street, Warr Acres
• Stillwater - 5 pm - St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, 711 North County Club Rd.

Anyone is welcome to take part in these vigils.