Crime and Criminology

Wendell Grissom, 56, was declared dead by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester at 10:13 a.m. It was Oklahoma’s first execution of 2025.

Oklahoma law says anyone who has ever scored 76 or higher on an IQ test is competent to die for their crime. Science says otherwise.

Glossip has been on death row for two decades and has survived nine execution dates. Now the United States Supreme Court has tossed his conviction.

Oklahoma averaged 115 domestic violence homicide victims annually between 2019 and 2023, up from an average of 90 between 2014 and 2018.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond requested the transfer last month so that George John Hanson would be eligible for the next available execution date which will likely be in June.

Benjamen Scott Burlew pleaded to assaulting an officer in May. Now, he wants to reverse course.

Four men worked together to squeeze extra money out of Oklahoma Department of Transportation construction projects. The final co-conspirator pleaded guilty in federal court in late February.

Officials say the RTIC will help keep the city safer, though privacy concerns exist.

"Masterful.... This book is an enduring, formidable accomplishment, a monument to the power of biography [that] now becomes the definitive work [on Hoover]." -- The Washington Post

"An eye-opening, fully humanizing, deeply affecting look at [America's] often-misunderstood juvenile justice system and its inhabitants -- young people of earnestness, disappointment, hope, and resilience." -- Booklist (starred review)