Man executed for 1996 killing of University of Oklahoma dance student

Oklahoma executed an inmate on Thursday for the 1996 killing of a University of Oklahoma dance student, in a case that went unsolved for years until DNA from the crime scene was matched to a man serving prison time for burglary.

Anthony Sanchez, 44, was pronounced dead at 10.19am. following a three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Even though he maintained that he had nothing to do with the killing of 21-year-old Juli Busken, he took the unusual step of opting not to present a clemency application to the state’s Pardon and Parole Board, which many viewed as the last chance to spare his life.

“I'm innocent,” Sanchez said as he was strapped to a gurney inside the death chamber. “I didn't kill nobody.”

Sanchez criticised his former attorneys and thanked his supporters, including his spiritual adviser who was in the chamber with him and the anti-death penalty group Death Penalty Action.

The lethal drugs, beginning with the sedative midazolam, were administered starting at around 10.08am.

At one point during the execution, a member of the execution team entered the chamber and reattached an oxygen monitor that prison officials said had malfunctioned during the procedure.

Shortly before he was put to death, the US Supreme Court rejected a request for a stay of execution submitted by his new lawyer, Eric Allen, of Columbus, Ohio. Allen had said he needed more time to go through the case evidence.

Sanchez was convicted of raping and murdering 21-year-old Juli Busken, a Benton, Arkansas, native who had just completed her last semester at the university when she was abducted on December 20, 1996, from the parking lot of her Norman apartment complex. Her body was found that evening near Lake Stanley Draper in far southeastern Oklahoma City. She had been bound, raped and shot in the head.

Busken had performed as a ballerina in several dance performances during her tenure at OU and was memorialised at the campus with a dance scholarship in her name at the College of Fine Arts.

Years later, Sanchez was serving time for a burglary conviction when DNA from sperm on Busken's clothing at the crime scene was matched to him. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 2006.

None of Busken's family attended Thursday's execution, but state Attorney General Gentner Drummond said he had spoken to them several times in recent months.

“Juli was murdered 26 years, nine months and one day ago. The family has found closure and peace,” Drummond said.

Sanchez has long maintained his innocence and did so again in a phone call to The Associated Press earlier this year from death row. “That is fabricated DNA,” Sanchez said. “That is false DNA. That is not my DNA. I've been saying that since day one.”

He told the AP that he declined to ask for clemency because even when the five-member Pardon and Parole Board takes the rare step of recommending it, Gov. Kevin Stitt has been unlikely to grant it. “I’ve sat in my cell and I’ve watched inmate after inmate after inmate get clemency and get denied clemency,” Sanchez said. “Either way, it doesn’t go well for the inmates.”

Drummond maintained that the DNA evidence unequivocally linked Sanchez to Busken's killing.

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