Cathy Stocker | |
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Personal details | |
Political party | Republican |
Education | University of Oklahoma College of Law |
Cathy Stocker is a former District Attorney for Blaine, Canadian, Garfield, Grant and Kingfisher counties in Oklahoma for 28 years before retiring in 2010, and a former member of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. [1] [2]
As district attorney, Stocker served on a task force that developed "various projects to increase awareness of domestic violence issues, to improve enforcement and prosecution of domestic violence laws and to provide services to those who suffer from domestic violence." [3] Stocker and her staff "implemented a domestic violence prosecution program in Canadian and Garfield Counties" and also "implemented the Garfield County Drug Court."
She was "a founding member of the Garfield County Child Advocacy Council" and "an appointed member of the Oklahoma Ethics Commission," serving as chair multiple times. [4] Stocker was the District Attorney during the Saundra Kay Medlin case, which was later overturned. Medlin argued battered woman syndrome, was sentenced to four years, but was later exonerated. [5] [6] At the time, Stocker said "her office was 'ready to vigorously pursue [Medlin's] case.'" [7] In 2007, Stocker’s office protested "the early release of 19 of the 22 inmates with convictions in her district seeking clemency from the state Pardon and Parole Board." [8]
In March 2022, Stocker was chosen by Governor Kevin Stitt for the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. Stocker resigned from her position on the Oklahoma Ethics Commission, to take the parole board appointment. [9] She replaced Kelly Doyle, who resigned from the parole board the previous month. [10] [11] Stocker was the only woman on the board. [12]
At her first pardon and parole board hearing, Stocker did not participate in voting. [13] In June 2023, Stocker voted against clemency for Richard Glossip, an inmate on death row [14] at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. [15] In July 2023, Stoker resigned from the board saying that her role was not a "good fit" with the rest of her life obligations. [16] [17]
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board is the parole board of the state of Oklahoma. The board was created by an amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution in 1944. The Board has the authority to empower the Governor of Oklahoma to grant pardons, paroles, and commutations to people convicted of offenses against the state of Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma District Attorneys Council is an agency of the state of Oklahoma that provides professional organization for the education, training and coordination of technical efforts of all Oklahoma state prosecutors and to maintain and improve prosecutor efficiency and effectiveness in enforcing the laws of the state. The Council distinguishes itself from the District Attorneys Association, a private organization, in order to lobby the legislature, though it is composed of the same members.
Edward J. Konieczny was the fifth bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma, United States. After studies at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, he was ordained to the diaconate and priesthood in 1994. He was elected bishop on May 5, 2007, and consecrated as such September 15, 2007. He served until his successor was installed in August 2020. In 2022, he was appointed by Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board.
Richard Eugene Glossip is an American prisoner currently on death row at Oklahoma State Penitentiary after being convicted of commissioning the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese. The man who murdered Van Treese, Justin Sneed, had a "meth habit" and agreed to plead guilty in exchange for testifying against Glossip. Sneed received a life sentence without parole. Glossip's case has attracted international attention due to the unusual nature of his conviction, namely that there was little or no corroborating evidence, with the first case against him described as "extremely weak" by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.
John Michael O'Connor is an American attorney and politician who served as the 19th attorney general of Oklahoma between 2021 and 2023. O’Connor was previously a shareholder of Hall Estill and a nominee to be a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, and the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma.
John Kevin Stitt is an American businessman and politician serving as the 28th governor of Oklahoma since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he was elected in 2018, defeating Democrat and former state Attorney General Drew Edmondson with 54.3% of the vote. Stitt was reelected to a second term in 2022, defeating Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister, a Republican turned Democrat, with 55.4% of the vote.
Kevin McDugle is an American politician who has served in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from the 12th district since 2016. He has appeared on Dr. Phil.
April Rose Wilkens is an American woman serving a life sentence at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center after her conviction for the murder of Terry Carlton and the subject of the podcast series Panic Button: The April Wilkens Case. She was one of the first women to use battered woman syndrome in an Oklahoma trial, and claimed to have acted in self defense, but it did not work in her favor and she was still found guilty by a jury. Local Tulsa news stations still to this day are hesitant to cover her case due to Carlton's family owning and operating dealerships which buy ad time from them. Her case caused an "outcry from those who say she acted because of battered woman syndrome." As of 2022, she was going into her 25th year of incarceration.
Steve Kunzweiler is the current Tulsa County District Attorney. He has worked on shows for the Forensic Files, See No Evil and 60 Minutes. He is on the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council.
Richard Smothermon is a current Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board member and former District Attorney in Oklahoma.
David Prater was the district attorney for Oklahoma County between 2007 and 2023. During his tenure, he gained significant attention for his criticism of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, prosecuting protestors during the George Floyd protests in Oklahoma City, and leading the initial corruption investigation into Terry O'Donnell.
Gilbert Ray Postelle was an American mass murderer who was sentenced to death and executed for his involvement in a quadruple murder in Oklahoma. He was executed on February 17, 2022, by lethal injection.
Glossip v. Chandler is a United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma case in which the plaintiffs challenged the State of Oklahoma's execution protocol. The initial lawsuit, Glossip v. Gross, rose to the United States Supreme Court in 2015 at the preliminary injunction stage and involved an earlier version of Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol. The case was reopened in the District Court in 2020 following an end to Oklahoma's moratorium on executions.
Gentner Frederick Drummond is an American attorney, rancher, banker, and politician from Oklahoma. Drummond is a member of the Republican Party and the current Attorney General of Oklahoma. He flew in the Gulf War air campaign during the Persian Gulf War, gaining national coverage for being one of the first American pilots interviewed during the war. He resides in the McBirney Mansion and is a member of the Oklahoma Drummond ranching family.
Kevin Buchanan is an American former district attorney for Washington County and Nowata County, Oklahoma from Bartlesville and an Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board member appointed by Governor Kevin Stitt on August 3, 2023. His term on the board will expire in January 2027.
On July 6, 1984, in Elk City, Oklahoma, seven-year-old Layla Cummings was abducted, raped, and murdered by Richard Norman Rojem Jr., who was previously convicted and jailed for sex offenses. Rojem, who was formerly married to Cummings's mother before their divorce, was convicted of murdering Cummings and sentenced to death in 1985. Rojem, who failed in multiple attempts to overturn his death sentence, was incarcerated on death row for close to 40 years before he was executed via lethal injection on June 27, 2024, after the state parole board rejected his appeal for clemency.
Phillip Dean Hancock was an American convicted murderer who killed a total of three people between 1982 and 2001. In 1982, Hancock was charged with fatally shooting a drug trafficker, Charles Lester Warren, which he claimed was a killing done in self-defense, and he was subsequently given a four-year jail term for first-degree manslaughter. 19 years later, Hancock would commit the double murder of James Vincent Lynch III and Robert Lee Jett Jr. by shooting both of them to death in 2001, for which he similarly claimed were killings done in self-defense. However, Hancock was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Hancock, who stood by his claims of self-defense throughout the post-conviction appeal process, was eventually executed via lethal injection on November 30, 2023.
On January 24, 1985, in Oklahoma City, 35-year-old schoolteacher Linda Reaves and her boyfriend Douglas Ivens were both shot by Bigler Stouffer, the boyfriend of Ivens' wife who was targeting Ivens for his $2 million life insurance policy. Ivens survived three gunshot wounds to his body, but Reaves was mortally wounded and died from two gunshot wounds to the head.
On June 19, 1992, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, 31-year-old convenience store owner Kenneth Meers was gunned down during a robbery perpetrated by two gunmen. The murderers – Glenn Bethany and Emmanuel Littlejohn – were arrested and charged with robbing and murdering Meers. Littlejohn was sentenced to death, while Bethany received a life sentence in separate trials between 1993 and 1994.
On March 6, 1997, seven days before his 74th birthday, Albert Troy Hale was attacked and murdered by a friend in his house at Oklahoma City over Hale's refusal to give his friend money to buy cocaine. The killer, James Allen Coddington, was charged and convicted of the murder, and sentenced to death in 2003. After exhausting all his appeals and losing his clemency plea, Coddington, whose death sentence was overturned in 2006 before it was restored in 2008, was executed via lethal injection on August 25, 2022.
267303 - Glossip, Richard E.