Oklahoma executes James Pavatt, 73, for killing Rob Andrew
Brenda Andrew, the victim's estranged wife, was sentenced to death in a separate trial and remains on death row.
Oklahoma executed James Pavatt, 73, by lethal injection Thursday for the 2001 murder of Rob Andrew, whose estranged wife also received a death sentence in the killing.
Pavatt was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. CST at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. When Department of Corrections Chief of Operations Jason Sparks asked if he had any last words, Pavatt shook his head.
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board had voted 3-2 in October against recommending clemency. At the hearing, Pavatt apologized for the suffering of Andrew’s family while denying responsibility for the killing, The Frontier reported.
“I know the family wants answers, and I wish I could give them to them, but I can't because I am not guilty of shooting anyone,” Pavatt told the board.
At the same hearing, Pavatt said he had fallen in love with Brenda Andrew and believed “everything she told me.” “It was not until my trial that I began to see the extent to which I had been manipulated by Brenda,” he said, adding that he understood why jurors thought both were involved.
His attorney, Hunter Labovitz, argued at the hearing that prosecutors had never offered credible evidence placing Pavatt at the murder scene.
During the execution, Pavatt appeared to mouth inaudible words as a chaplain read from a Bible. His breathing did not appear labored, and he was declared unconscious about six minutes before he was pronounced dead, The Associated Press reported.
Prison officials described the execution as “uneventful,” Fox News reported, citing KOKH. Media witnesses gave it the same description, according to UPI.
For his last meal, Pavatt asked for a strawberry milkshake and a barbecue dinner of smoked chicken, brisket, pulled pork, fried okra, baked beans and pickles. A prison spokesperson said neither Pavatt’s relatives nor Andrew’s attended the execution, though Pavatt’s daughter and her husband visited him the night before.
Andrew, a 39-year-old advertising executive and father of two, was fatally shot Nov. 20, 2001, in the garage of the Oklahoma City home he once shared with Brenda Andrew. He had arrived shortly before Thanksgiving to collect his two young children for a holiday visit.
Weeks before the shooting, someone cut the brake lines on Andrew’s car, and he told police someone was trying to kill him.
Pavatt attended the Andrew family’s church and had an affair with Brenda Andrew, Fox News reported. His attorneys denied the affair, UPI reported.
Prosecutors said Pavatt and Brenda Andrew plotted the killing to collect an $800,000 life insurance policy he had helped arrange.
Brenda Andrew told police that masked intruders shot her in the arm and killed her husband. Prosecutors and police said Pavatt shot Andrew in the garage, while prosecutors maintained that both defendants were equally guilty regardless of who fired the fatal shots.
After the shooting, Pavatt and Brenda Andrew went to Mexico with her two children. They were arrested about three months later as they re-entered the United States.
Pavatt was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. He and Brenda Andrew received death sentences in separate trials in 2004. She remains on Oklahoma’s death row as the only woman currently sentenced to death in the state.
Texas was scheduled to execute John Allen Rubio, 46, later Thursday at the state prison in Huntsville for the 2003 killings of three young children he was raising in Brownsville.
