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   McALESTER, Okla. — Oklahoma executed an inmate Thursday for the 1996   
   killing of a University of Oklahoma dance student, in a case that   
   went unsolved for years until DNA from the crime scene was matched   
   to a man serving prison time for burglary.   
      
   Anthony Sanchez, 44, was pronounced dead at 10:19 a.m. following a   
   three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in   
   McAlester. Even though he maintained that he had nothing to do with   
   the killing of 21-year-old Juli Busken, he took the unusual step of   
   opting not to present a clemency application to the state’s Pardon   
   and Parole Board, which many viewed as the last chance to spare his   
   life.   
      
   “I’m innocent,” Sanchez said as he was strapped to a gurney inside   
   the death chamber. “I didn’t kill nobody.”   
      
   Sanchez criticized his former attorneys and thanked his supporters,   
   including his spiritual adviser who was in the chamber with him and   
   the anti-death penalty group Death Penalty Action.   
      
   The lethal drugs, beginning with the sedative midazolam, were   
   administered starting at around 10:08 a.m.   
      
   At one point during the execution, a member of the execution team   
   entered the chamber and reattached an oxygen monitor that prison   
   officials said had malfunctioned during the procedure.   
      
   Shortly before he was put to death, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected   
   a request for a stay of execution submitted by his new lawyer, Eric   
   Allen, of Columbus, Ohio. Allen had said he needed more time to go   
   through the case evidence.   
      
   Sanchez was convicted of raping and murdering Busken, a Benton,   
   Arkansas, native who had just completed her last semester at the   
   university when she was abducted on Dec. 20, 1996, from the parking   
   lot of her Norman apartment complex. Her body was found that evening   
   near Lake Stanley Draper in far southeastern Oklahoma City. She had   
   been bound, raped and shot in the head.   
      
   Busken had performed as a ballerina in several dance performances   
   during her tenure at OU and was memorialized at the campus with a   
   dance scholarship in her name at the College of Fine Arts.   
      
   Years later, Sanchez was serving time for a burglary conviction when   
   DNA from sperm on Busken’s clothing at the crime scene was matched   
   to him. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 2006.   
      
   None of Busken’s family attended Thursday’s execution, but state   
   Attorney General Gentner Drummond said he had spoken to them several   
   times in recent months.   
      
   “Juli was murdered 26 years, nine months and one day ago. The family   
   has found closure and peace,” Drummond said.   
      
   Sanchez has long maintained his innocence and did so again in a   
   phone call to The Associated Press earlier this year from death row.   
   “That is fabricated DNA,” Sanchez said. “That is false DNA. That is   
   not my DNA. I’ve been saying that since day one.”   
      
   He told the AP that he declined to ask for clemency because even   
   when the five-member Pardon and Parole Board takes the rare step of   
   recommending it, Gov. Kevin Stitt has been unlikely to grant it.   
   “I’ve sat in my cell and I’ve watched inmate after inmate after   
   inmate get clemency and get denied clemency,” Sanchez said. “Either   
   way, it doesn’t go well for the inmates.”   
      
   Drummond maintained that the DNA evidence unequivocally linked   
   Sanchez to Busken’s killing.   
      
   A sample of Anthony Sanchez’s DNA “was identical to the profiles   
   developed from sperm on Ms. Busken’s panties and leotard,” Drummond   
   wrote last month in a letter to a state representative who had   
   inquired about Sanchez’s conviction. Drummond added there was no   
   indication either profile was mixed with DNA from any other   
   individual and that the odds of randomly selecting an individual   
   with the same genetic profile were 1 in 94 trillion among Southwest   
   Hispanics.   
      
   “There is no conceivable doubt that Anthony Sanchez is a brutal   
   rapist and murderer who is deserving of the state’s harshest   
   punishment,” Drummond said in a recent statement.   
      
   A private investigator hired by an anti-death penalty group   
   contended that the DNA evidence may have been contaminated and that   
   an inexperienced lab technician miscommunicated the strength of the   
   evidence to a jury.   
      
   Former Cleveland County District Attorney Tim Kuykendall, who was   
   the county’s top prosecutor when Sanchez was tried, has said that   
   while the DNA evidence was the most compelling at trial, there was   
   other evidence linking Sanchez to the killing, including ballistic   
   evidence and a shoe print found at the crime scene.   
      
      
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