Olan Robison was executed by the State of Oklahoma for a triple murder
According to court documents Olan Robison and two accomplices would force their way into a home and would murder Julia Sheila Lovejoy, Averyl Bourque and Robert Leon Swinford
Olan Robison would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Olan Robison would be executed by lethal injection on March 13 1992
Olan Robison Case
Convicted triple-murderer Olan Randle Robison, who called himself an outlaw “not worth killing” before his conversion to Christianity, was put to death at dawn Friday.
Oklahoma State Penitentiary Warden Dan Reynolds ordered anonymous executioners to administer the lethal injections at 6:15 a.m. Robison, serene in the hours and minutes before his death, was pronounced dead 14 minutes later.
Reynolds said the last words he heard the condemned man utter were, “I love you, Jesus. ” Robison, 46, was sentenced to death for the murders of Julie Sheila Lovejoy, Robert Leon Swinford and Averil Joan Bourque during a botched robbery in 1980 at a home on the outskirts of Velma in Stephens County.
His death sentence in Bourque’s slaying was overturned in 1988.
Robison’s cousin and another man who accompanied him during the attempted robbery and shootings each received three life sentences.
Robison accepted responsibility for the murders, admitting that his accomplices could not have committed the crime without his help. However, Robison claimed he could not have killed the trio because he was passed out in a car due to the effects of drugs and alcohol.
In the hours leading up to his death, Robison comforted his family and supporters.
“He’s assured them he knows he’s going to heaven and they know it, too,” said Scott Braden of the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System. “It’s amazing, his attitude. ” Robison’s fate was sealed when U.S. Supreme Court Justices late Thursday voted unanimously not to hear his eleventh-hour appeal
“It’s exhausted. There’s nowhere else to go,” Braden said early Friday.
In recent weeks, supporters pinned their hopes on a clemency recommendation to the governor by the state Pardon and Parole Board. Robison’s attorney, Randy Bauman, claimed his client was “the living embodiment” of rehabilitation and deserving of mercy.
However, parole board members rejected Robison’s bid for a reprieve without a dissenting vote.
Robison’s only recent legal victory came Thursday when a Pittsburg County judge issued an injunction effectively barring an autopsy on Robison’s body.
But the attorney general’s office said State Medical Examiner Fred Jordan could not sign the death certificate without performing an autopsy. Without the death certificate, family members would be unable to proceed with a cremation they had planned at a Marlow funeral home.
Spokesman Gerald Adams said Olan Robison’s body was taken to an Ada hospital until the matter was resolved.
The inmate’s supporters claimed his religious conversion, prompted by a jailhouse baptism after his arrest for the murders, was genuine and labled him a “missionary behind the walls. ” Death penalty supporters and protesters were about evenly split outside the walls of the prison.
Gloria Byars, who said she has friends and family on death row, said killing is wrong no matter what the purpose
“It’s cruel, low-down, dirty and sickening,” Byars said. “We’re going to keep on fighting it. I know there’s a God up above who’ll look down and fix it. ” But Trina Tomberlin, whose brother was a murder victim, said execution is justice. “People who choose to murder give up their right to life
https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/1992/03/14/killers-last-words-i-love-you-jesus/62499356007/
