Oklahoma executed Antony Sanchez on Thursday morning, marking the third death row inmate given the lethal injection by the state this year. Sanchez was 44. In 2006, he was convicted of the 1996 rape and murder of Juli Busken, a 21-year-old dance student at the University of Oklahoma. His conviction was based on DNA evidence collected when he was jailed in 2002 on a separate burglary charge; that DNA was matched to the Busken case two years later. On Thursday, Sanchez used his final words to maintain his innocence, according to the Associated Press. “I’m innocent,” he said. “I didn’t kill nobody.” Earlier this year, Sanchez accused his late father of being the true killer, claiming the older man confessed to Busken’s murder before dying by suicide last April. State Attorney General Gentner Drummond insisted in a recent statement that Sanchez had not been wrongfully convicted. “There is no conceivable doubt that Anthony Sanchez is a brutal rapist and murderer who is deserving of the state’s harshest punishment,” he said. On Thursday, the state attorney general added, “Juli was murdered 26 years, nine months and one day ago. [Her] family has found closure and peace.”
