By Rep. Ben Loring
House Bill 2876, by Rep. Jason Dunnington, D-Oklahoma City, died on Feb. 27, 2020, without ever being discussed. The reason why that’s important to me is because Gary Welch died on Jan. 5, 2012. He was executed by the State of Oklahoma and I was the person who put him on that gurney.
I was the district attorney who made the prayerful and painful decision to file the Bill of Particulars (the criminal pleading that initiates the process of the death penalty). I was the one who argued for the death penalty to the jury and convinced them. I was the one who attended the appeal and clemency hearings. I was the one who attended the execution, which was one of the last ones that Oklahoma did not botch. As the only member of the Legislature (I believe) to have been so intimately involved in an execution, I was looking forward to a thoughtful discussion of Rep. Dunnington’s bill on whether we should still have the death penalty in Oklahoma.
That never happened – I suppose because we have been so busy in the Legislature making campaign statements for the upcoming elections that we don’t have the time to discuss trivial matters like the death penalty. However, Oklahoma, as one legislative leader said, was “excited” that executions are soon going to resume, even though we never had that discussion. I think even he would submit that might have been a poor choice of words. There is nothing to be excited about. Unlike the policeman in the dead of the night, or the soldier in the heat and grime of the battlefield who is reacting to an imminent threat, this was a thoughtful process of 17 years that I pursued. It has been more than eight years since I sat and watched the death of the man I had actually become friends with during that process between the murder and the execution.
I always used the excuse, “If you are going to have the death penalty, this is the perfect case for it.” We (law enforcement) knew, but could not prove (witnesses refused to testify for fear of their own lives), that this crime stemmed from a drug deal gone bad and the assailants went as enforcers for the drug group to cut out the victim’s tongue, so that he would not talk. But — things went horribly wrong.
There was absolutely no question of mistaken identity. In his dying breath to the first police officer at the scene, the victim, Robert Hardcastle said, “Gary Welch did this to me...” Welch and co-defendant Claudie Conover were caught within minutes, both soaked in Hardcastle’s blood. While the entire series of events started in Hardcastle’s apartment, it spilled out into a street on a bright, sunny day. A handful of witnesses traveling the street saw them chasing Hardcastle, already covered in blood, into the street and attack him there. One even pulled into a neighboring house, called 9-1-1 (this was before cell phones), and gave police a blow by blow description of what he was seeing.
There was absolutely no question that the murder was particularly heinous and cruel. The medical examiner testified that Hardcastle had 20-plus stab and slash wounds, each of which would have likely caused his death. When Conover went to retrieve the car, he took the knife with him, and witnesses saw Welch find a beer bottle, break it and resume slashing the languishing victim.
There was no question both Welch and Conover had a long history of violent criminal behavior. Conover had murdered before and had shot another man point- blank, center mass, just because someone else dared him to. Somehow the victim survived, but was permanently disabled mentally and physically. Welch had a long history of the knife being his weapon of choice in numerous assaults. Conover died in prison from natural causes in 2001, leaving only Welch to be executed. Welch was never apologetic, insistent to the end that he and Conover were only chasing and stabbing Hardcastle in self-defense.
“If you are going to have the death penalty, this is the perfect case for it.” Is that really the right conversation? This is still one of the many devils I wrestle with daily. Interestingly, in the House of Representatives, whether appropriate or not under the U.S. Constitution and the Oklahoma Constitution, we had a lot of discussion about what a Christian society the great State of Oklahoma is and how we need to prove that to the world. And yet, we are “excited” about resuming executions? Meanwhile, we cannot even have a discussion about whether the death penalty is an appropriate penalty, regardless of the circumstances.
How does the death of Gary Welch, for which I am personally responsible, further one single teaching of Jesus?
State Rep. Ben Loring is a Democrat from Miami.