Oklahoma: Kevin Ray Underwood executed – despite significant mental disorders

On Thursday morning, Kevin Ray Underwood was executed by lethal injection by the US state of Oklahoma – on his 45th birthday.

He was sentenced to death for killing a 10-year-old girl from his neighborhood in 2006. Underwood’s attorneys argued for nearly a decade in the appellate courts that their client was a “mentally ill man” who deserved clemency.

As Underwood told FBI agents in an interview after his arrest, he had felt the desire to “kidnap a person, sexually abuse them, eat their flesh and dispose of their remains”.

Underwood grew up as a “social misfit” who was severely bullied. According to court documents, he was unable to complete his studies because he suffered from panic attacks and crippling anxiety. As his mental illness worsened, he sought solace online and withdrew further into his virtual world and fantasies.

Medication, Underwood’s lawyers wrote in 2019, could have reduced the effects of his sexual cravings, depression, social anxiety and obsessive thoughts.

“Even though I don’t want to die – I know I deserve to die for what I’ve done,” he said in an emotional two-minute statement at his parole hearing. “And if my death could change what I have done, I would gladly die.”

Underwood called the decision to carry out the execution on his birthday and six days before Christmas “an unnecessarily cruel act toward my family.” That Underwood’s execution was scheduled on his birthday was a coincidence, due in part to the fact that trials are only held on Thursdays.

Underwood used his final words to apologize. “I want to ask forgiveness again for all the terrible things I’ve done,” he declared from the execution couch. “I hate that I did these things and I wish I could undo them.”

As he was strapped to the gurney, he looked to his mother more than once. He apologized to his family and to the victim’s family.

Source: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/12/19/oklahoma-execution-kevin-underwood/77070179007/