Oklahoma executes death row inmate, Alabama also to put man to death

Nov. 17 (UPI) -- Oklahoma executed Richard Fairchild and another inmate in Alabama was scheduled to be put to death on Thursday

Fairchild, 63, of Oklahoma City, was put to death on Thursday for the 1995 murder of the 3-year-old son of his girlfriend at the time. He was pronounced dead at 10:24 a.m. CST.

Fairchild, a former amateur boxer, was found guilty of torturing and murdering the boy for wetting the bed. The Oklahoma parole board denied Fairchild clemency in a 4-1 vote on Oct. 12 for his 1996 conviction.

Fairchild's attorneys said their client suffered from mental illness and was greatly impaired because of numerous traumas that have led to organic brain syndrome. Fairchild's supporters said he endured an abusive childhood that led to his brain injury, leading to worsening schizophrenia.

In Alabama, Kenneth Eugene Smith is set to die by lethal injection Thursday in the 1988 murder-for-hire of a pastor's wife. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for a stay of execution.

Smith was sentenced to death in 1996 after his conviction in the murder of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, a 45-year-old grandmother who was killed in March 1988 in her home in north Alabama. Her husband paid to have her killed.

Prosecutors said Sennett's husband, debt-ridden church leader Charles Sennett, hatched the murder-for-hire plot for insurance money to pay off debts. Sennett committed suicide a week after his wife was killed.

Smith's attorneys had filed a federal lawsuit in August arguing that his execution should be blocked because Alabama's lethal injection protocol violated the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment.