Supreme Court won’t hear Del City double murder case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to consider the capital murder case of Donald Grant, who killed two women in a Del City motel in 2001, making the 43-year-old man eligible for execution.

Grant’s guilt is not in question and his federal defender, Patti Palmer Ghezzi, did not dispute that he killed Brenda McElyea, 28, and Felecia Suzette Smith, 42, at a La Quinta Inn on July 18, 2001.

Instead, Ghezzi challenged Grant’s death sentence, arguing that his paranoid schizophrenia was a clear mitigating factor but was ignored. Grant had originally been found incompetent to stand trial and his testimony contained bizarre references to “Shriners Masons,” the Illuminati and Grant’s belief that hewrote the Bible.

The prosecutor in Grant’s case suggested his mental illness, if it existed at all, was not a mitigating factor because it did not reduce Grant’s moral culpability, according to Ghezzi. Ghezzi argued that claim was legally incorrect and robbed her client of his constitutional rights to a fair sentence.

“Mr. Grant received two death sentences for the murders,” she wrote to the Supreme Court in November. “In Oklahoma, if even one juror believed she could not consider or give effect to the mental health evidence presented during Mr. Grant’s capital trial, the death verdicts are flawed and rendered unreliable.”

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office disputed that, calling Ghezzi’s arguments “meritless.” The Supreme Court agreed, and decided there was no reason for justices to consider the case. By denying Grant’s appeal, the Supreme Court exhausts his federal appeals and makes him eligible for execution. Nineteen inmates in Oklahoma are awaiting execution.

Executions in the state are pending as the Attorney General’s Office and Department of Corrections craft a protocol for the use of nitrogen gas.