The Pardon and Parole Board hopes a new Department of Corrections executive director will be receptive to their request to move clemency hearings to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
Interim Executive Director Tracy George reported Monday she recently had discussed the idea of moving the hearings from the Kate Barnard Community Corrections Center in Oklahoma City to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Death row inmates are housed and executed at the maximum security facility in McAlester.
George told the board DOC Interim Director Edward Evans and other staff said the hearings are staff intensive, raise security concerns and are expensive and that they would prefer not to move them.
“Every point of objection they raised happens here in this room,” said Pardon and Parole Chair Marc Dreyer.
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