Execution
Allen spent 12 years on death row. Her application for clemency was refused.
While in prison, she claimed to become a born-again Christian. The Reverend Robin Meyers, who served as a spiritual adviser to Allen, is quoted as saying, "I always suspected that Wanda's renunciation of lesbianism had more to do with helping to revamp herself in the most palatable way for her clemency and appeal processes. She knew perfectly well that her being a lesbian was a big strike against her and that it's an embarrassment in the black community. She was going to play the best hand that she could play at the very end."
Allen, then 41, was executed by lethal injection by the State of Oklahoma on Thursday, January 11, 2001 at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Twenty-four relatives of murder victim Gloria Leathers and manslaughter victim Detra Pettus traveled to McAlester for the execution. Many of them watched the execution from behind a tinted window. While lying on the execution gurney, Allen said, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." She also stuck her tongue out and smiled at her appeal lawyer, Steve Presson, who had become her friend. He says she was "dancing on the mattress, while they tried to kill her." She was pronounced dead at 9:21 p.m.
Read more about this topic: Wanda Jean Allen
Famous quotes containing the word execution:
“If I were asked to chose between execution and life in prison I would, of course, chose the latter. It’s better to live somehow than not at all.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.”
—Gabriel Péri, French Communist leader. Letter, July 1942, written shortly before his execution by the Germans. Quoted in New York Times (April 11, 1943)
“The application requisite to the duties of the office I hold [governor of Virginia] is so excessive, and the execution of them after all so imperfect, that I have determined to retire from it at the close of the present campaign.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)