Oklahoma death row inmate Anthony Sanchez, 44, was executed by lethal injection at 10:19 a.m. Thursday for the 1996 rape and murder of a 21-year-old ballerina.
Sanchez received a series of three injections, with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections noting that the victim’s family was not present.
The 44-year-old was sentenced to death after being convicted of the heinous crime against University of Oklahoma student Juli Basken, whom he kidnapped, sexually assaulted, bound and shot in the head at Lake Stanley Draper.
His last meal was chicken fried steak, fried okra, mashed potatoes, apple pie and ice cream, warm rolls and sweet iced tea. On Tuesday he told KFOR: “To tell you the truth, I probably won’t be able to eat it.”
Although a bullet, DNA evidence, a footprint and a sketch of the suspect convinced a jury of his guilt, Sanchez maintained his innocence until the execution but did not seek clemency, saying there was “little hope.”
While Sanchez was strapped to the stretcher, his last words were, “I’m innocent. I didn’t kill anyone.”
Some reports said he added that his lawyers were “the worst lawyers in the state of Oklahoma” and that he was “sorry to whoever has them as their lawyers.”
Oklahoma death row inmate Anthony Sanchez, 44, was executed by lethal injection at 10:19 a.m. for the 1996 rape and murder of a 21-year-old ballerina
His last meal was chicken fried steak, fried okra, mashed potatoes, apple pie and ice cream, warm rolls and sweet iced tea
Speaking to KFOR earlier this week, Sanchez said: “If this makes the busks happy and gives them the opportunity to move on, I’m happy for them.” But I’m innocent. “I didn’t kill her daughter,” he added to the outlet.
Sanchez also told the medium that he did not want anyone in his family to witness the execution.
“No one wants their son executed, and that’s why I don’t want anyone here.”
The case remained unsolved for years until DNA from the crime scene matched Sanchez, who was in prison for burglary.
Although he maintained that he had nothing to do with Busken’s murder, he took the unusual step of not filing a clemency petition with the state Pardon and Parole Board, which many viewed as his last chance to save his life.
Shortly before he was executed, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a request from his new lawyer, Eric Allen of Columbus, Ohio, to stay the execution.
Allen had said he needed more time to go through the evidence.
Busken, a native of Benton, Arkansas, had just completed her final semester of college when she was abducted from the parking lot of her Norman apartment complex on December 20, 1996.
Busken has performed as a ballerina in several dance performances during her tenure at OU and was honored on campus with a dance scholarship in her name to the College of Fine Arts.
Juli Busken (pictured), a dance student at the University of Oklahoma, was found kidnapped, raped and murdered in Oklahoma City in 1996. According to court documents, she was shot in the back of the head with a .22-caliber firearm
Busken, a ballerina native of Benton, Arkansas, had just completed her final semester of college when she was abducted from the parking lot of her Norman apartment complex on December 20, 1996
Years later, Sánchez was serving a prison sentence for a burglary conviction when DNA from sperm on Busken’s clothing at the crime scene was matched to him. He was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to death.
Sanchez has long maintained his innocence and reiterated that in a phone call with The Associated Press from death row earlier this year. “This is made-up DNA,” Sanchez said. “This is fake DNA.” This is not my DNA. I’ve been saying that since day one.’
He told the AP that he refused to ask for clemency because even if the five-member Pardon and Parole Board took the rare step of recommending it, Gov. Kevin Stitt was unlikely to grant it.
“I have sat in my cell and watched inmate after inmate receive clemency and be denied clemency,” Sanchez said. “Either way, things aren’t going well for the inmates.”
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond claimed that the DNA evidence clearly linked Sanchez to Busken’s murder.
A sample of Anthony Sanchez’s DNA “was identical to the profiles developed from the sperm on Busken’s panties and jersey,” Drummond wrote last month in a letter to a state representative who inquired about Sanchez’s conviction.
Drummond added that there was no evidence that any of the profiles were mixed with another person’s DNA and that the odds of randomly selecting a person with the same genetic profile were 1 in 94 trillion among Southwest Hispanics.
“There is no doubt that Anthony Sanchez is a brutal rapist and murderer who deserves the state’s harshest punishment,” Drummond said in a recent statement.
A private investigator hired by an anti-death penalty group claimed that the DNA evidence may have been contaminated and that an inexperienced lab technician misrepresented the strength of the evidence to a jury.
Former Cleveland County District Attorney Tim Kuykendall, the county’s top prosecutor when Sanchez was tried, said that while the DNA evidence was the most compelling at trial, there was other evidence that linked Sanchez to the crime murder, including ballistics evidence and a shoe print found at the crime scene.
Gov. Kevin Stitt (pictured June 14, 2023) has only granted clemency once. Sanchez claimed there was “little hope” that the state’s Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, would spare his life
Supporters of Oklahoma death row inmate Anthony Sanchez maintain his innocence during a press conference at the Oklahoma Capitol in Oklahoma City on May 25, 2023
“Having spent a lot of time on this case, I know that there is not a single piece of evidence that points to anyone other than Anthony Sanchez,” Kuykendall said recently.
“I don’t care if a hundred or a thousand people confess to killing Juli Busken.”
In 2021, Oklahoma resumed carrying out the death penalty, ending a six-year moratorium prompted by concerns about execution methods.
The state had one of the busiest death chambers in the country until problems arose in 2014 and 2015.
Richard Glossip was just hours from his execution in September 2015 when prison officials realized they had been given the wrong lethal drug.
It later emerged that the same wrong drug had been used to execute an inmate in January 2015.