Jerry McCracken was executed by the State of Oklahoma for four murders
According to court documents Jerry McCracken and an accomplice would enter a lounge and decided to rob it. Before the robbery was done McCracken would shoot and kill four people: Tyrrell Lee Boyd, Steve Allen Smith, Timothy Edward Sheets and Carol Ann McDaniels
Jerry McCracken would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Jerry McCracken would be executed by lethal injection on December 10 2002
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When Was Jerry McCracken Executed
Jerry McCracken was executed on December 10 2002
Jerry McCracken Case
An Army veteran who killed four people during a 1990 robbery at a Tulsa nightclub was executed Tuesday. Jerry Lynn McCracken, 35, was pronounced dead at 6:06 p.m. after receiving an injection of drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. He was the fifth inmate executed in Oklahoma this year.
McCracken was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to die for the shooting deaths of Steve Allen Smith, 34, Tyrrell Lee Boyd, 27, Timothy Edward Sheets, 39, and Carol Ann McDaniels, 41, at the New Ferndale Lounge on Oct. 14, 1990. Each of the victims was shot with a .22-caliber pistol during a robbery at the bar in which $350 was taken. A co-defendant, David Keith Lawrence, pleaded guilty and received a sentence of life in prison plus 20 years in exchange for his testimony against McCracken. No members of the victims’ families witnessed the execution.
At his trial, McCracken blamed Lawrence for the murders. “I am not the one who pulled the trigger,” McCracken told a jury in September 1991. But McCracken changed his story and admitted he was the triggerman in an interview published by the Tulsa World last year. “I am guilty. I have no excuse,” said McCracken. “I am ready to die.” McCracken was on pre-parole release from prison for a series of knife assaults when the murders occurred.
The state Pardon and Parole Board rejected clemency for McCracken at a hearing last month where he apologized to Lawrence for talking him into helping with the robbery. McCracken’s execution went forward after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a last-minute bid to stay the execution.
Issues raised in McCracken’s federal appeals included ineffective counsel, aggravating evidence used to support the death penalty and defective jury instructions in which a judge said McCracken was presumed “not guilty” instead of presumed innocent. The instruction was not objected to at trial, but the state Court of Criminal Appeals granted automatic reversals to defendants who did, according to documents filed by McCracken’s attorney, David Autry.
Autry argued that McCracken was a candidate for clemency because he suffered from personality disorders and had a predisposition to alcoholism and substance abuse. Autry said McCracken was “heavily intoxicated” when the murders occurred. While on death row, McCracken devoted himself to his Christian faith and corresponded with a variety of prison ministries. At his clemency hearing, McCracken said he promised God he would not cut his hair, which hangs past his shoulders and mingles with a long beard.
McCracken is the 53rd inmate to be executed in the state since executions resumed in 1990. Two other death row inmates are scheduled to die this month: Comanche County killer Jay Wesley Neill is scheduled to die on Thursday and Oklahoma County killer Ernest Melvin Carter Jr. is scheduled to die on Dec. 17. Gov. Frank Keating is considering a recommendation by the Pardon and Parole Board that Carter be granted clemency.
http://www.newsok.com/cgi-bin/show_article?ID=958903&pic=none&TP=getarticle
