Oklahoma Executes Michael Dewayne Smith
LOADING ERROR LOADING Oklahoma returned to its state-sanctioned killing spree with the execution Thursday of a 41-year-old Black man, Michael Dewayne Smith. Smith’s execution comes after Oklahoma resumed the death penalty in 2021, which had been on pause for nearly six years, and arranged the execution dates for 25 people. “The only thing that it’s going to be is less ethical.” Attorneys for Michael Dewayne Smith, shown on Feb. 5, 2021, made last-ditch pleas for clemency before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. Though Smith’s attorneys have argued he is intellectually disabled, his IQ results have landed from 71 to 79, according to The Report of the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission. “How in the fuck could race not play a role in the sentencing of a Black man in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma?” “When I saw Michael on that gurney, strapped down, I saw a Black man in America who had been strapped down by this society his entire life.” Smith told HuffPost that he, too, believed that his race played a role in his sentence and compared his case to that of Richard Glossip, a white man on Oklahoma’s death row whose case has drawn nationwide attention.
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