Michael Dewayne Smith, who was convicted of shooting and killing two people in Oklahoma City more than two decades ago, was executed Thursday morning. Smith received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was pronounced dead at 10:20 a.m., said Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesperson Lance West, reports the Associated Press. After the first of three lethal drugs, midazolam, was administered, Smith, 41, appeared to shake and attempt to lift his head from the gurney before relaxing. He then took several short, audible breaths that sounded like snores or gasps. Corrections Director Steven Harpe Smith “appeared to have some form of sleep apnea.”
Smith was sentenced to die in the separate shooting deaths of Janet Moore, 41, and Sharath Pulluru, 22, in February 2002. He is the first person executed in Oklahoma this year and the 12th since the state resumed executions in 2021 after a nearly seven-year hiatus resulting from problems with executions in 2014 and 2015. In a clemency hearing last month, Smith expressed his “deepest sorrows” to the victims’ families, but denied he was responsible. “I didn’t commit these crimes. I didn’t kill these people,” Smith said, breaking into tears during his 15-minute address to the board, which denied him clemency in a 4-1 vote. “I was high on drugs. I don’t even remember getting arrested.”