John David Duty
Convicted US murderer
Died when: 58 years 235 days (703 months)Star Sign: Taurus
John David Duty (April 25, 1952 – December 16, 2010) was an American who was executed in Oklahoma for first-degree murder.According to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, he is the first person in the United States to have been put to death with pentobarbital.
A nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental led the state to incorporate the substitution into their protocol for lethal injections.Duty's case gained media attention because pentobarbital had typically been used to euthanize animals.
Duty was sentenced to death for strangling a fellow inmate at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in December 2001.At the time, Duty had been serving a life sentence for a 1978 conviction of rape, robbery and shooting with intent to kill.
He did not contest the murder charge and vowed that he would kill again if he was not executed.Duty later filed appeals that the change to the method of execution could be inhumane, but was denied.
Though his case had gone all the way to the U.S.Supreme Court, opponents of capital punishment claimed that Duty had manipulated the system to be executed as a method of escape from life imprisonment.
He was put to death at the same penitentiary where he had committed the murder nearly nine years earlier.