Oklahoma carries out its first execution of 2026 on a man convicted of double killing

McALESTER, Okla. — A man who admitted to killing two men in a drive-by shooting in 2006 was put to death Thursday in Oklahoma’s first execution of the year.

Kendrick Simpson, 45, was pronounced dead at 10:19 CT following a three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, prison officials said. He was convicted of killing Anthony Jones, 19, and Glen Palmer, 20, by firing into their car following an altercation at an Oklahoma City nightclub.

Simpson, who had fled to Oklahoma City from the devastated city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, admitted to the killings during a clemency hearing last month. He apologized to the victims’ families and to a third man who was in the vehicle when Jones and Palmer were shot.

“I apologize for murdering your sons,” Simpson said at the hearing. “I don’t make any excuses. I don’t blame others, and they didn’t deserve what happened to them.”

Despite his apology, the state’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board narrowly voted to deny Simpson clemency.

And on Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court had no comment as it rejected a late appeal to block the execution.

Simpson’s attorneys had argued that he suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder stemming from chronic trauma in his childhood years growing up in a New Orleans housing project.

“Kendrick is a man worthy of your mercy and compassion,” his attorneys wrote in his clemency application. “The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst offenses and offenders. Kendrick and his case represent neither.”

On the night of the killing in January 2006, prosecutors say, Simpson had placed an assault rifle in the trunk of a vehicle that he and his friends drove to a club in northwest Oklahoma City. After an altercation at the club between Simpson and Palmer, prosecutors say 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 rounds into their car. Both victims were shot multiple times.

Some of the victims’ family members told the board they supported his execution.

“Do I believe this man should live and be able to breathe and take out the rest of his life behind a cell?” Palmer’s sister, Crystal Allison, wrote in a letter to the panel. “He made the choice for him so I stand here today to make the choice for my family. Yes, we would like to see him executed for what he did — he executed my brother.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond commended the board for denying Simpson clemency, calling him a “ruthless and violent killer who hunted his victims without remorse.”

The state uses the sedative midazolam, followed by vecuronium bromide to halt the breathing and potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Simpson’s scheduled execution was to be the second of the year in the United States. Florida, which conducted a state record of 19 executions in 2025, put Ronald Palmer Heath to death with a three-drug injection on Tuesday for his conviction in the 1989 killing of a traveling salesman he and his brother met at a Gainesville bar.

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025, with Florida leading the way with a flurry of death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas tied for second place with five executions each that year.

Florida is scheduled to carry out the next execution in the U.S. on Tuesday, the planned lethal injection of Melvin Trotter for the killing of a grocery store owner during a robbery.