(Reuters) -The Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday overturned a stay of execution for two condemned prisoners in Oklahoma, allowing the state to move forward with its first executions in six years even as public support for the death penalty diminishes.
With the last-minute intervention from the high court, the state will put to death John Grant at 4 pm on Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, his lawyer, Dale Baich, said.
The ruling overturns a stay of execution for Grant and Julius Jones, who is scheduled to be put to death on Nov. 28.
Grant, 60, was sentenced to death for killing a prison employee, and Jones, 41, for murdering an insurance executive gunned down in his driveway. Jones has maintained his innocence for two decades in a case that has attracted attention from celebrities and anti-death penalty activists.
In ordering the state to delay the executions, a three-judge panel of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals had said a lower court had unfairly denied the two men delays granted to numerous other defendants pursuing a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the state’s three-drug lethal injection protocol.
But the Supreme Court on Thursday vacated that stay without commenting further on the case. The case was accepted for the court by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the order said. Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate.
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
