Oklahoma: Phillip Hancock executed – despite clemency recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles
A good hour late, 59-year-old Phillip Dean Hancock was executed by lethal injection by the US state of Oklahoma on Thursday morning.
He had killed two men in a physical altercation in 2001, but always claimed to have acted in self-defense – also in his last words.
However, the competent jury court rejected his claim of self-defense, found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to death in 2004.
The judge also accused Hancock of never expressing remorse for the killing of the two men and instead indicated that he would react in the same way again under similar circumstances.
The Board of Pardons and Paroles had voted in favor of commuting the death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole about three weeks ago, but Republican Governor Kevin Stitt stood firm and had the death sentence carried out on Hancock.
It was only the fourth time a death row inmate had received such a clemency recommendation – Governor Stitt only followed the clemency board in 2021 in the case of Julius Jones.
The death sentences of Bigler Stouffer, James Coddington and now Phillip Hancock were carried out mercilessly on behalf of Governor Kevin Stitt.