A group of clergy leaders and civil libertarians are making a last-minute plea to Gov. Mary Fallin to halt the scheduled execution of an Oklahoma City man for killing a baby in 1997.
Holding signs that read: "Don't Kill for Me," members of the American Civil Liberties Union, the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty and NAACP met at the state Capitol and called on the governor to stop the execution of Charles Warner.
Warner is scheduled to die at 6 p.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
ACLU of Oklahoma legal director Brady Henderson said they were protesting "two senseless tragedies."
"The first one happened in 1997 when a man named Charles Warner brutally murdered a very young person named Adrianna Waller," Henderson said. "The second one is going to happen tonight. And I equate the two together because fundamentally they happened for the same reason. They happened because people make decisions that don’t respect life, that don’t respect humanity."
Former state Sen. Connie Johnson said holding an execution on the day of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birth was "cruelly ironic."
The group plans to hold a protest outside the governor's mansion, followed by a vigil at the approximate time of Warner's death.
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