Updated: November 17 at 10:55 a.m.
For the fifth time in 2022 and just the seventh time in nearly eight years, Oklahoma has executed a death row inmate.
Richard Stephen Fairchild was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 10:24 a.m. Thursday morning. He's the seventh death row inmate to be killed since the state resumed capital punishment in October 2021 after a six-year moratorium. He was 63.
Fairchild was convicted in the 1993 murder of his girlfriend's three-year-old son, Adam Broomhall. The beating death happened after a heavy night of drinking by Fairchild and the victim's mother, Stacy Broomhall.
Prosecutors reported the victim had 26 bruises on his body as well as burns across his chest and buttocks after Fairchild held him against a wall furnace, so he would stop screaming.
Sandra Stensaas, an assistant district attorney in Oklahoma County at the time, called it "the worst case of child abuse I have ever seen.
Oklahoma has one more execution scheduled this year, and 22 total before the end of 2024.
ORIGINAL POST
An Oklahoma man who killed his girlfriend’s three-year-old child almost 30 years ago is set to be executed Thursday morning.
Richard Fairchild’s execution follows the Pardon and Parole Board denying him a recommendation of clemency last month - in favor of arguments from representatives of the Attorney General’s office and wishes of the family of the victim, Adam Broomhall, and despite testimony from a neuropsychologist describing Farichild’s schizophrenia.
Additionally, more than two dozen Christian clergy are calling for a moratorium on the death penalty in Oklahoma. Former Pardon and Parole Board member Adam Luck also signed onto the statement claiming the death penalty conflicts with their religious beliefs.
Twenty-two more death row inmates are scheduled to be executed through the end of 2024.
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