A murderer from Oklahoma has been executed by lethal injection after his request for a firing squad was denied.
Gilbert Ray Postelle, 35, was killed at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, on Thursday at 10.06am for murdering four people at the request of his father when he was a teenager.
Postelle was convicted and sentenced to death for his role in the quadruple slaying of James Alderson, Terry Smith, Donnie Swindle, and Amy Wright, in 2005.
The execution looked to have gone off without a hitch, according to media observers. When asked whether he had any last words, they said Postelle, whose last meal consisted of 20 chicken nuggets, a variety of dipping sauces, three huge fries with ketchup, a crispy chicken sandwich, a chicken sandwich, a large cola, and a caramel frappe, shook his head no. Postelle’s request to be executed by firing squad was denied by US District Judge Stephen Friot.
In the lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s lethal injection, he demanded that all plaintiffs choose an alternative method of execution. Postelle’s execution was the fourth in Oklahoma since October, when the state overturned a nearly seven-year moratorium on executions, and the third in the United States this year.
According to Mail Online, Postelle and his older brother David were convicted of murdering four people in Del City, Oklahoma, in 2005. Around 60 rounds were fired from assault rifles during the attack on a mobile home where a man named Donnie Swindle was living.
Earl Postelle, the father of the boys, blamed Swindle for a motorcycle accident the previous year that left him severely injured. Swindle, two other men, and a woman who were at the mobile home at the time were killed.
In a hearing before the Oklahoma clemency board in December, Gilbert Postelle said he had been a methamphetamine addict since the age of 13. ‘My life at that time was filled with chaos and drugs,’ Postelle said.
‘It was a family addiction.
‘ ‘In no way does that excuse my actions,’ he added. ‘I do regret the pain and the loss that I have caused.’ Postelle said he was under the influence of his father, who was declared mentally incompetent because of brain injuries from the motorcycle accident and did not go on trial.
He has since died. ‘My dad was everything to me, even with all of his flaws,’ Postelle told the clemency hearing. Postelle’s brother David was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his role in the slayings.
The other man involved, Randal Wade Byus, cooperated with the authorities and was sentenced to six years in prison.
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