McALESTER, Okla. — A man convicted of two fatal shootings in Oklahoma City more than two decades ago was executed Thursday morning, marking the state's 12th execution since it resumed capital punishment in 2021.
Michael DeWayne Smith, 41, was pronounced dead at 10:20 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary after a lethal injection. He declined to make a last statement, saying, "Nah, I'm good," according to media witnesses.
The execution went forward after both the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his requests for emergency stays. The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 4-1 on March 6 to deny Smith clemency.
Smith, who was member of an Oklahoma City street gang, was convicted of shooting and killing two people in 2002. He committed the murders, according to attorneys for the state, because he chose "a life of crime and violence" centered around the gang.
"Michael DeWayne Smith, known more commonly by the moniker 'HK' or 'Hoover Killer,' is a proud member of the Oak Grove Posse," the state attorney general and his assistants told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. "Smith ... did not just join a gang. Smith was an active recruiter for the OGP and their self-appointed enforcer."
Smith maintained he was innocent even though he confessed to police. He told The Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network, in a phone interview Monday that he couldn't avoid his gang involvement and lacked a father figure to keep him focused.
"As a kid ... you're surrounded ... by the gang members or people affiliated with gangs," Smith said. "It was the community I was in. That was the culture. ... It was one of the biggest regrets of my life, actually."
Smith also told the parole board he was hallucinating from drug use when he confessed to police. "I didn't commit these crimes. I didn't kill these people. I was high on drugs," he said.
Smith was convicted at trial of first-degree murder for two fatal shootings on Feb. 22, 2002. Jurors agreed he should be executed for both deaths.
The first victim, Janet Moore, 40, was shot once at her apartment. The second victim, Sharath Babu Pulluru, 24, was shot nine times at a convenience store then doused with lighter fluid and set on fire. Neither was Smith's original target, according to testimony at the 2003 trial.
Smith, then 19, was high on PCP and hiding from the police, who had a warrant for his arrest on a 2001 murder case. In the first shooting, Smith had been looking for Moore's son, who he mistakenly thought was a police informant, prosecutors said.
"It's her fault she died," Smith told police. "She panicked and she got shot. ... She like, 'Help! Help!' I'm like, I had to. I had no choice."
Smith next went to the convenience store to shoot an employee who had made comments to a newspaper about a robbery at another store, where a clerk killed a fellow gang member in 2000, prosecutors said. He instead killed Pulluru, who was filling in at the store for a friend.
The shootings in 2002 came days before a trial for two other gang members involved in the robbery was set to begin. Smith confessed to his roommate and a neighbor before his arrest, according to their testimony at his trial.
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Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond witnessed Smith's execution and read statements from the victims' families afterward. Drummond said he prayed that the execution brings some measure of peace for the families.
"My heart aches over the agony they have endured," he said. “I want the people of Oklahoma to know that the victims of Michael Smith were good and decent people who did not deserve their fate.
“Janet and Sharath were murdered simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was all."
In the execution room with Smith was his spiritual adviser, Jeff Hood, who read from a Bible. Hood said he told Smith before the execution began that his family loved him.
"He began to cry," Hood said. "He was talking about his mom and how much he loved her. He was talking about his brothers and how much he loved them."
Hood recalled seeing tears coming down the right side of Smith's face the entire time of the lethal injection. He said the last tear streamed down after Smith was pronounced dead.
Demonstrators protested against the execution outside the Oklahoma Governor's Mansion. They held signs that said, "DON'T KILL FOR ME" and "STOP EXECUTIONS."
The Rev. Don Heath, chair of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, described Smith as a troubled and vulnerable young man with intellectual disabilities.
"He was ill-served by advisers who encouraged him to proclaim his innocence instead of accepting responsibility for his crimes," Heath said. "That cost him any chance for clemency. He needed mercy and forgiveness and got none.”
Smith was one of the few death row inmates in the country to be convicted of three or more murders.
He was convicted at a separate trial of second-degree murder for the fatal shooting of a man outside an Oklahoma City club on Nov. 24, 2001. He had admitted to police that he handed the gun to the shooter.
