Oklahoma prepares to execute Michael DeWayne Smith for 2002 murders

Oklahoma is scheduled to execute a man Thursday for fatally shooting two people in Oklahoma City more than two decades ago.

Michael DeWayne Smith, 41, will become the fourth inmate in the nation this year to be put to death if he doesn't get a last-minute stay. Alabama, Texas, and Georgia already have carried out executions, according to a database kept by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Smith would be the first person executed in the state this year and the 12th since capital punishment resumed in 2021. He is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday denied his request, for the fourth time, for an emergency stay. Smith also was seeking an emergency stay at the U.S. Supreme Court. Smith claims he is innocent even and told the parole board he was hallucinating from drug use when he confessed to police.

His attorneys also have claimed he is intellectually disabled."I don't want to die, man," Smith told The Oklahoman, part of the USA TODAY Network, on Monday in a phone interview. "Who can ever be prepared to die, man? I sure don't want to die for something I didn't do."