McALESTER, Okla. (AP)-- Oklahoma carried out a prisoner Thursday for the 1996 killing of a University of Oklahoma dance student-- a case that went unsolved for many years until DNA from the criminal offense scene matched a guy serving jail time for burglary.
Anthony Sanchez, 44, was noticable dead at 10:19 a.m. following a three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
He took the uncommon action earlier this year of choosing not to provide a clemency application to the state's Pardon and Parole Board, which many viewed as his last possibility to have his life spared. His former attorneys blamed Sanchez's decision on his spiritual advisor, the Rev. Jeff Hood, an anti-death penalty advocate who has actually befriended death row prisoners across the country.
Sanchez's new attorney, Eric Allen of
Columbus, Ohio, has asked for a stay of execution in federal court, claiming he needs more time to go through boxes of evidence in the case. Far, that demand has been rejected by a federal judge and is pending prior to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Sanchez was founded guilty of raping and murdering 21-year-old Juli Busken, an Arkansas native who had actually simply completed her last term when she was abducted on Dec. 20, 1996, from the car park of her Norman apartment complex. Her body was found that evening near a lake in far southeast
Oklahoma City. She had actually been bound, raped and shot in the head.
Busken had actually performed as a ballerina in a number of dance performances during her period at OU and was memorialized at the school with a dance scholarship in her name at the College of Fine Arts.
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Years later on, Sanchez was serving time for a robbery conviction when DNA from sperm on Busken's clothes at the criminal activity scene was matched to him. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 2006.
Sanchez has actually long maintained his innocence and did so once again in a call to The Associated Press earlier this year from death row. "That is made DNA," Sanchez said. "That is false DNA. That is not my DNA. I've been saying that since day one."
He told AP he decreased to request for clemency due to the fact that even when the five-member Pardon and Parole Board takes the unusual step of advising it, Gov. Kevin Stitt has been unlikely to give it. "I've beinged in my cell and I've enjoyed prisoner after prisoner after prisoner get clemency and get denied clemency," Sanchez stated. "Either way, it doesn't work out for the inmates."
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond maintained the DNA proof unquestionably links Sanchez to Busken's killing.
A sample of Anthony Sanchez's DNA "was identical to the profiles developed from sperm on Ms. Busken's panties and leotard," Drummond composed last month in a letter to a state agent who had asked about Sanchez's conviction. Drummond included there was no indication either profile was mixed with DNA from any other private and that the chances of arbitrarily selecting a private with the same genetic profile were 1 in 94 trillion among Southwest Hispanics.
" There is no possible doubt that Anthony Sanchez is a ruthless rapist and murderer who is deserving of the state's harshest punishment," Drummond said in a current declaration.
A private investigator hired by an anti-death charge group contends the DNA evidence may have been polluted which an unskilled laboratory professional miscommunicated the strength of the evidence to a jury.
Former
Cleveland County District Attorney Tim Kuykendall, who was the county's top prosecutor when Sanchez was tried, has said that while the DNA evidence was the most compelling at trial, there was other proof connecting Sanchez to the killing, consisting of ballistic evidence and a shoe print found at the crime scene.
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" I understand from spending a great deal of time on that case, there is not one piece of proof that indicated anybody other than Anthony Sanchez," Kuykendall stated recently. "I don't care if a hundred individuals or a thousand individuals confess to eliminating Juli Busken."
Oklahoma resumed performing the death sentence in 2021, ending a six-year moratorium caused by issues about its execution approaches. The state had one of the nation's busiest death chambers up until problems occurred in 2014 and 2015. Richard Glossip was hours away from being executed in September 2015 when jail authorities realized they got the incorrect lethal drug. It was later learned the very same wrong drug had been utilized to carry out an inmate in January 2015.
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