James Coddington, 50, was given a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in McAlester and pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m. Coddington was the fifth inmate to be put to death since Oklahoma resumed executions last year. The governor, Kevin Stitt, refused to commute his sentence to life in prison without parole. Coddington was sentenced to death for beating 73-year-old Albert Hale to death with a hammer. Prosecutors say Coddington, then 24, became enraged when Hale refused to give him money to buy cocaine. During a clemency hearing this month before the five-member pardon and parole board, Coddington, now 50, apologized to Hale’s family and said he had changed. “I’m clean, I know God, I’m not … I’m not a vicious killer,” Coddington said. “If this ends today with my death sentence, fine.” Mitch Hale, Albert Hale’s son, urged the parole board not to recommend clemency and said this week he was relieved Stitt decided to let the execution go ahead. “Our family can put it behind us after 25 years,” Hale, 64, said. “No one is ever happy when someone dies, but [Coddington] he chose that path… he knew what the consequences were, he rolled the dice and lost.” Coddington’s barrister Emma Rolls told the panel Coddington suffered from years of alcohol and drug abuse which began as an infant when his father would put beer and whiskey in his bottles. The commission voted 3-2 to recommend clemency. Stitt refused the parole board’s recommendation. Coddington was twice sentenced to death for Hale’s murder, the second time in 2008 after his original sentence was overturned on appeal. After killing Hale, Coddington committed at least six armed robberies at gas stations and convenience stores throughout Oklahoma City. “When the full circumstances of the murder, the related robberies and Mr. Coddington’s extensive history of violence are considered, one thing is clear: death is the only just punishment for him,” prosecutors wrote in the attorney general’s office. of the state’s pardon and parole board. Oklahoma halted the executions in September 2015 when corrections officials realized they had been given the wrong lethal drug. It was revealed that the drug had been used to execute a prisoner and the executions were put on hold.
