December 19 – Thousands of petition signatures are collected by leaders and supporters of the Death Penalty Action claiming an unfair clemency process for Kevin Underwood, who was ultimately executed Thursday.
Underwood was executed for the 2006 murder of 10-year-old Jamie Rose Bolin.
Those protesting at DPA first gathered outside Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt’s office in Oklahoma City at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, December 18, to submit that petition.
“There is no reason for Oklahoma to continue executions, especially when it comes to a man who is so seriously mentally ill,” said Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action, speaking outside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary Thursday morning. was in McAlester.
Bonowitz said Oklahoma can be completely safe for people who have committed terrible crimes while holding them accountable without executions.
“We know this because we do not execute the vast majority of convicted murderers,” Bonowitz said.
The execution was the fourth this year in Oklahoma and the 25th nationwide, joining eight other states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.
Underwood was the last execution of the year in the US. Notably, Wednesday morning’s execution in Indiana was the third state this year to resume executions, after more than a decade without executions, after Utah in August and South Carolina in September. Idaho failed to complete an execution attempt in February.
Bonowitz said he delivered the petition to Governor Stitt and held protest vigils outside the Governor’s Mansion in Oklahoma City.
Bonowitz, along with Heidi Leach and Charles Keith from Ohio, held another protest vigil for OSP with a live hybrid virtual vigil hosted by DPA.
According to DPA, the hosted vigils will begin an hour before each scheduled U.S. execution, bringing together a multifaith panel of experts and faith leaders and connecting viewers around the world to the protest on site at the prison.
The protesters joined the prayer vigil of Rev. Bryan Brooks and Rev. Khiet Nquyen, waiting for Underwood’s time of death at 10:14 a.m. Both Brooks and Nquyen are from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa, the Catholic Church of Eastern Oklahoma.
Bonowitz held a laptop that streamed the virtual vigil and rang the Delaware Bell, which the DPA delivered, before and after the priests’ prayer vigil.
According to DPA, the Delaware Bell was “left out of many of Delaware’s 16 executions” before the state Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional and the Legislature struck the death penalty from the state statute.
The bell was donated to DPA by Delaware citizens who oppose the death penalty, “to share their loud call for abolition where executions are threatened.”
Sue Hosch of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty rang the bell for fourteen previously executed death row inmates in Oklahoma since 2021, and then one for Underwood.
