OKLAHOMA WATCH: Stitt cut Oklahoma’s prison population, sentencing alternatives still unfunded | News

Candidate Kevin Stitt campaigned on reducing the nation’s highest incarceration charge, emphasizing the necessity to present extra assist for non-violent offenders. 

He stored the previous promise, following the need of voters in his first 12 months as governor by signing the most important single-day commutation in U.S. historical past and releasing 523 non-violent offenders. In all, Stitt’s workplace says he signed 774 commutations, 290 pardons, and 101 paroles in 2019.

Under his administration, Oklahoma’s prison inhabitants has decreased by 20% for males and 30% for ladies. Yet, neither Stitt nor the Legislature has supplied the particular prison alternatives voters mandated.

“We’ve closed two private prisons. We have 5,000 fewer people incarcerated. So from a fiscal standpoint, we’ve saved— it’s about 25,000 an inmate to incarcerate them for a year — We’ve saved a lot of money for the taxpayers,” Stitt advised Oklahoma Watch reporters in an Oct. 13 interview. “I think trying to have policies where we lock people up that we’re afraid of, not that we’re mad at.”

In 2016, voters handed state questions reclassifying some low-level, non-violent drug offenses as misdemeanors and channeling the financial savings from decrease incarceration charges into psychological well being and substance abuse remedy.

Those voter-mandated various approaches outlined in State Question 781 stay unfunded. In truth, zero {dollars} have been set assigned, an Oklahoma Watch report in August revealed.

Stitt proposed funding in solely certainly one of his 4 budgets. His request for $10 million for State Question 781 initiatives went unfunded. Some legislative leaders declare to have fulfilled the spirit of the legislation by investing in one other diversion program referred to as Smart on Crime.

Stitt, nonetheless, signed a sequence of re-entry reform payments aimed toward making it simpler for individuals with prison convictions to search out jobs.

One offers prisoners nearing launch state-issued identification and job coaching. Another bans state boards from denying skilled licenses primarily based on prison convictions 5 years or older until the offense is immediately associated to the job duties. However, it included exceptions for violent felonies and sexual offenses. 

Oklahoma turned the sixth state to make the expungement course of computerized, a invoice Stitt signed in May.

Recent efforts to cut back courtroom fines and charges, disproportionately affecting lower-income individuals popping out of the prison justice system, have confirmed tougher to get by means of the Legislature. 

Senate Bill 1458, which proposed eliminating courtroom fines paid to 6 state companies and reducing the quantity district attorneys can cost in probation supervision charges, cleared the House and Senate however was in the end overlooked of the 2023 price range. 

Stitt stated the state is well-positioned to cut back courtroom prices as a result of lawmakers modified how district legal professional’s places of work are funded. Senate Bill 1068, enacted in 2019, directs district attorneys to deposit probation supervision charges into the state’s common fund. 

Stitt fulfilled one other 2018 marketing campaign promise by resuming Oklahoma executions. Under Stitt, Oklahoma ended its years-long execution pause and withstood authorized challenges to its deadly injection procedures. The state is scheduled to execute greater than 20 prisoners by means of 2024. 

When Stitt took workplace in early 2019, the state was moving forward with a plan to execute prisoners with nitrogen gasoline. This proposal was in the end deserted after officers had been unable to discover a prepared provider of a gasoline distribution gadget. 

In February 2020, the legal professional common’s workplace and corrections division introduced that they had discovered a provider of deadly injection medication and had been ready to renew executions underneath an up to date protocol. Executions remained on maintain by means of 2020 and the primary half of 2021 because of a pending federal lawsuit over the constitutionality of the state’s execution procedures. 

John O’Connor, appointed by Stitt following Hunter’s resignation in June 2021, sought execution dates for seven demise row prisoners faraway from the lawsuit in August 2021. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals granted the request weeks later, and the state ended an almost its practically seven-year execution moratorium on Oct. 27, 2021, placing John Marion Grant to demise. 

Grant vomited and violently convulsed after the medication had been administered, media witnesses reported. Attorneys representing demise row prisoners testified in a federal trial earlier this 12 months that Grant doubtless suffered excessive ache and struggling in the course of the process. The state countered by arguing a big sedative dose had rendered Grant totally unconscious on the time of the vomiting. 

According to witnesses, 5 different executions carried out over the previous 12 months didn’t have seen problems. In June, U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot ruled that the state’s deadly injection protocol doesn’t violate the eighth modification prohibition on merciless and strange punishment. 

Stitt granted clemency as soon as in his time period, commuting Julius Jones’ demise sentence to life with out the potential for parole hours earlier than his scheduled execution on Nov. 18, 2021. During an Oct. 19 gubernatorial debate, Stitt declined to reply a query on why he granted clemency and if he believes Jones is harmless. 

Stitt denied clemency for demise row prisoners Bigler Stouffer and James Coddington, who each obtained a positive advice of leniency from the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. The governor appoints three of the board’s 5 members. 

Dark cash teams have targeted Stitt over his determination to commute a whole lot of prison sentences, principally for individuals convicted of drug or property crimes. One commercial launched in early March claims that Stitt authorised the “largest mass release of felons” of U.S. historical past, although the prisoners launched within the November 2019 commutations had been convicted of crimes that had been reclassified as misdemeanors underneath State Question 780.