James Malicoat was executed by the State of Oklahoma for the murder of his 13 month old daughter Tessa Leadford
According to court documents James Malicoat would fatally beat his daughter Tessa Leadford. The autopsy report would show injuries both old and new showing it was not the first time the little girl was beaten
James Malicoat would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
James Malicoat would be executed on lethal injection on August 31 2006
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When Was James Malicoat Executed
James Malicoat was executed on August 31 2006
James Malicoat Case
A Chickasha man who was convicted of killing his 13-month-old daughter nearly 10 years ago was executed Thursday evening at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. James Patrick Malicoat, 31, was pronounced dead at 6:09 p.m. CDT, four minutes after receiving a lethal dose of drugs. Malicoat was executed for the beating death of Tessa Ledford, whom authorities said had been in her father’s care for 19 days. During that time she suffered abdominal bleeding, broken ribs, bite marks and extensive bruising.
When the curtains to the execution chamber were lifted, Malicoat — strapped to a gurney and wearing glasses — turned his head to the witness room, smiled and gave a small wave. In his final words, Malicoat expressed remorse for his crime. “I just want to tell everyone how sorry I am that this had to have happened, any of it,” Malicoat said to the witnesses, who including two of his spiritual advisers, three of his attorneys and two other people connected to him. “I’m sorry I caused the death of another human, but there’s nothing I can do to change it. Contrary to what some people believe, I have spent very many years going over it in my head and it’s never left me. I hope someday people involved in it will move on.” He thanked the witnesses who came to support him, then said, “That’s just about it.”
He smiled at the witnesses again, then turned his head and looked at the ceiling as the drugs began being administered. He took two deep breaths and closed his eyes, and appeared to stop breathing moments later. “He died within a few seconds of injection,” said Grady County District Attorney Bret Burns, who helped prosecute Malicoat and attended the execution. “You can’t say that for his victim. Tessa took 19 days to die.”
Burns said he respected Malicoat for offering remorse, but that Malicoat needed to be executed for his crime. No members of Tessa’s family attended the execution, and neither did Malicoat’s mother, Reta Luther. For his final meal request, Malicoat asked for fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, biscuits, a large Dr Pepper and a mini apple pie, Corrections Department spokesman Jerry Massie said.
On Aug. 1, the five-member state Pardon and Parole Board unanimously denied clemency to Malicoat, even after Tessa’s mother, Mary Ann Leadford, and other family members pleaded with the board to spare Malicoat’s life.
Mary Leadford, convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison for her daughter’s death, said in a videotape that Malicoat should spend the rest of his life in prison and live with his pain. “As hard as it is, I have forgiven him. I don’t think he should die,” Leadford said.
Malicoat was the fourth inmate to be executed this year in Oklahoma, coming two days after Eric Allen Patton — convicted of the December 1994 murder of Charlene Elizabeth Kauer in Oklahoma City — was put to death. Malicoat’s execution had been scheduled for Aug. 22, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals delayed it to allow Malicoat to give a deposition in the competency hearing for another death-row inmate, Garry Thomas Allen.
In one of Malicoat’s earlier appeals, he had claimed that Oklahoma’s use of lethal injection as an execution method constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The state Court of Criminal Appeals in a unanimous June 19 ruling disagreed, saying the method was constitutional and that the lethal injection process “comports with contemporary standards of decency.” A new lethal drug recipe, which was to deliver a larger dose of anesthesia before the fatal drugs are administered, was first used during Patton’s execution.
