Oklahoma Executes James Pavatt

The lethal injection is the death sentence a jury imposed and the courts left in place. A foreman's later doubt about who fired was an argument for clemency and for a stay. The parole board and the Supreme Court both refused, and Rob Andrew is dead.

James Dwight Pavatt, 73, was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. Central on Thursday after a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He declined a final statement and shook his head.

He had been convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the Nov. 20, 2001, killing of Rob Andrew, a 39-year-old Oklahoma City advertising executive. Andrew was shot in the garage of the home he had shared with his estranged wife, Brenda Andrew. Pavatt, a former Air Force master sergeant who sold life insurance, was having an affair with her and had helped arrange an $800,000 policy on Andrew's life.

In the weeks before the shooting, someone cut the brake lines on Andrew's car, and he reported it. After the killing, Pavatt and Brenda Andrew fled to Mexico. They were arrested there months later, tried separately, and both sentenced to death. Brenda Andrew, 62, is still the only woman on Oklahoma's death row, and she is appealing.

At an October clemency hearing, Pavatt said he had not shot anyone. His lawyer told the board that prosecutors called him the gunman at his trial and called Brenda Andrew the shooter at hers. Jury foreman Mark Haydon told the board he voted for death because he believed Pavatt fired, and that he later came to doubt it. The attorney general's office said Pavatt once confessed in a letter. The Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 against recommending clemency. On Thursday the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay and refused to hear the case.

All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.