Macalester, Okla.– A man who apologized for killing two men in a drive-by shooting after a nightclub brawl is scheduled to be executed on Thursday in the first such incident. to implement The year in Oklahoma and the second in the United States.
Kendrick Simpson, 45, was scheduled to receive lethal injection at Oklahoma State Prison for the 2006 killings of 19-year-old Anthony Jones and 20-year-old Glenn Palmer, who were shot to death after a dispute at an Oklahoma City club.
Simpson, who fled to Oklahoma City from devastated New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, admitted to the murders during a clemency hearing last month. He apologized to the victims’ families and to a third man who was in the car when Jones and Palmer were shot.
“I apologize for killing your sons,” Simpson said at the hearing. “I’m not making any excuses. I’m not blaming others, and they don’t deserve what happened to them.”
Despite his apology, the state’s five-member Board of Pardons and Paroles narrowly voted to deny clemency to Simpson.
On Wednesday afternoon, the US Supreme Court had no comment as it rejected a late appeal to block the execution.
Simpson’s lawyers said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by chronic trauma during his childhood years when he grew up in a housing project in New Orleans.
“Kendrick is a man deserving of your mercy and compassion,” his lawyers wrote in his clemency application. “The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst crimes and offenders. But Kendrick and his case represent neither.”
Prosecutors say that on the night of the killing in January 2006, Simpson put an assault rifle in the trunk of the car he and his friends were driving to a club in northwest Oklahoma City. After an altercation at the club between Simpson and Palmer, prosecutors said Simpson and his friends followed Palmer and Jones from a nearby gas station and that Simpson pointed the gun out the window and fired about 20 shots into their car. Both victims were shot multiple times.
Some family members of the victims told the council that they support his execution.
“Do I think this man should live and be able to breathe and spend the rest of his life behind a dungeon?” Palmer’s sister, Crystal Allison, wrote a letter to the committee. “He chose it for him, so I stand here today making the decision for my family. Yes, we would like to see him executed for what he did – he executed my brother.”
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond praised the board for denying clemency to Simpson, calling him a “ruthless and violent killer who pursues his victims without remorse.”
The state uses the sedative midazolam, followed by vecuronium bromide to stop breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart.
Simpson’s execution was scheduled to be the second this year in the United States. Florida, which carried out a state record of 19 executions in 2025, set… Ronald Palmer Heath to death Tuesday, with a three-drug injection for the 1989 murder of a street vendor he and his brother met at a Gainesville bar.
A total of 47 people They will be executed in the United States in 2025, with Florida leading the way with a series of death orders signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second place with five executions each that year.
It is scheduled to be implemented in Florida The next execution in the United States is Tuesdaythe planned lethal injection of Melvin Trotter to kill a grocery store owner during a robbery.