Scheduled Execution (02/12/26): Kendrick Simpson – Oklahoma Death Row
On February 12th, 2026, at exactly 10:00 a.m. Central Time, a man will walk into the execution chamber at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. His name is Kendrick Simpson. He’ll be 41 years old, and if everything proceeds as scheduled, he’ll become the first person executed in Oklahoma this year.
But here’s what makes this case particularly complex: Simpson will have spent 19 years on death row, nearly half his life, his entire adult existence from age 22 onward confined to a cell waiting for this moment. The question that’s been debated in courtrooms, clemency hearings, and countless legal filings is straightforward, yet deeply complicated. Does Kendrick Simpson deserve to die for what he did on January 16th, 2006?
A Childhood of Trauma
To answer that question, we need to go back. Not just to that night in Oklahoma City, but further. Because Simpson’s story doesn’t begin with gunfire outside a nightclub. It begins in one of America’s most troubled neighborhoods with a childhood that reads like a catalog of traumas.
Kendrick Simpson was born in New Orleans’ 9th Ward to a teenage single mother struggling with crack cocaine addiction. The details of his early years are difficult to recount, but they’re essential to understanding the full picture. Simpson was sexually abused as a child. He grew up surrounded by violence and poverty. By 8th grade, he’d dropped out of school entirely.
But even by the standards of his difficult upbringing, the months leading up to his arrival in Oklahoma were catastrophic. In November 2004, Simpson was shot five times in a drive-by shooting. The reason? He’d refused to harm another person. Those five bullets required 16 surgeries over 7 months.
Simpson was still recovering when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005. Like tens of thousands of others, Simpson found himself stranded at the New Orleans Convention Center. No food, no water, up to 25,000 people crammed into a facility designed for convention-goers, not disaster refugees. The images from that Convention Center became some of the most haunting from Katrina. Simpson lived through it. One month later, in September 2005, he relocated to Oklahoma City as a displaced person.
The Night of the Crime
He’d been in Oklahoma for exactly 4 months when everything fell apart. January 15th, 2006, started like many weekend nights for young people in Oklahoma City. Simpson and two friends, Jonathan Dwight Dalton and Len Gual Wayne Robertson, decided to go out. But Simpson made a decision that evening that would prove fatal. Despite his friends urging him not to, he brought an AK-style assault rifle with him.
Around midnight, they arrived at Fritzi’s, a hip-hop club in Oklahoma City. What happened next is where accounts start to vary slightly, but the basic facts are these: Someone made a comment about Simpson’s red Chicago Cubs baseball cap. An argument developed. Simpson, according to testimony, threatened to chop them up. Then something strange happened. Simpson approached the group he’d just been arguing with, extended his hand, and said, “We cool.” It seemed like the confrontation was over.
But Glenn Palmer, a 20-year-old who was part of the other group, didn’t trust the gesture. He punched Simpson to the ground. Both groups left the club.
The night could have ended there. Simpson could have gone home, nursed his bruised ego, and moved on with his life. Glenn Palmer and Anthony Jones could have done the same, but that’s not what happened. Both groups ended up at a 7-Eleven convenience store. And this is where Simpson made the decision that would cost two young men their lives and seal his own fate.
He directed his friend to follow Palmer’s vehicle. They tracked the car for several miles through Oklahoma City streets. Then Simpson opened fire. Twenty rounds from an AK-style assault rifle tore into the vehicle. Glenn Palmer, 20 years old, was killed. Anthony Jones, 19 years old, was killed. London Johnson, also 19, was in the back seat. He survived, the sole witness to what happened in those terrible seconds.
Simpson’s own words afterward are chilling. “I’m a monster,” he said. “I just shot the car up. They shouldn’t play with me like that.” But he didn’t stop there. According to prosecutors, Simpson then threatened his accomplices and even attempted to arrange the murder of London Johnson, the surviving witness.
The Trial and Excluded Evidence
The trial began in 2007. It lasted nine days. The jury consisted of seven men and five women. Simpson’s two friends, Dalton and Robertson, had already pleaded guilty to being accessories to murder. They received 20-year prison sentences, and they testified against Simpson.
The evidence was overwhelming. Beyond the testimony of his accomplices, a jail cellmate took the stand. He testified that Simpson showed no remorse, that he laughed about the crime, and that he wanted to kill potential witnesses. The prosecution painted a picture of a cold-blooded killer without conscience.
But Simpson’s defense team tried to introduce something crucial. They’d hired Dr. Philip Massad, who evaluated Simpson and found it likely he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Think about everything Simpson had experienced: childhood sexual abuse, being shot five times, surviving Hurricane Katrina. The trauma was documented and real.
Here’s the problem. The trial court granted the state’s motion to preclude PTSD testimony during the guilt phase of the trial. The jury never heard the full extent of Simpson’s mental health issues while deciding whether he committed the murders. They only heard limited mental health evidence later during the sentencing phase.
The jury convicted Simpson of two counts of first-degree murder with malice aforethought, discharging a firearm with intent to kill, and possession of a firearm after former conviction of a felony.
The Sentencing and Years on Death Row
Then came the sentencing decision. Would Kendrick Simpson live or die? It took the jury less than two hours to decide. Death. Two death sentences, one for each victim. The jurors found four aggravating factors. Simpson had a prior violent crime conviction. His actions threatened more than one person. The elements that make someone eligible for capital punishment in Oklahoma were present. Simpson was 22 years old when he killed Glenn Palmer and Anthony Jones. He was 23 when he was sentenced to death.
And then he entered a system where time moves differently. Death row isn’t a quick process. It’s measured in years, in appeals, in legal motions that can stretch on for decades. But something unexpected happened during those years. Simpson changed, or at least he appeared to change in ways that complicated the narrative of the remorseless killer presented at trial.
On death row, Simpson earned his GED, the high school equivalency diploma he’d never obtained as a kid who dropped out in eighth grade. He took college courses. He started writing. Eventually, he published a book containing poetry, short stories, and essays. Some of that poetry won awards. Family members have said Simpson’s transformation inspired them to pursue their own education.
This is where the case becomes philosophically complex. The criminal justice system, particularly capital punishment, operates on a theory: the person who committed the crime is the person we punish. But what happens when 19 years pass? Is a 41-year-old man the same person as the 22-year-old who fired those shots? If someone demonstrates genuine change, does that matter? Should it matter?
The Final Appeals
Simpson’s legal team certainly thought so. They filed appeal after appeal. In 2019, they took a case to the US Supreme Court arguing that Simpson’s trial lawyer provided ineffective assistance during the punishment phase. The Supreme Court declined to consider the appeal. In October 2025, just months before his scheduled execution, Simpson’s attorneys filed a constitutional challenge to Oklahoma’s execution method in federal court. These legal challenges are common in capital cases, but they rarely succeed.
The final chance came on January 14th, 2026. Just 29 days before his scheduled execution, Simpson appeared before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board for a clemency hearing. This was it. The last real opportunity to present a case for why his life should be spared.
Simpson spoke directly to the victims’ families. “I’m not the worst of the worst,” he said. “I’m not a monster.” He expressed what his attorneys described as profound remorse. His defense team argued that the jury at his trial never heard the full PTSD evidence. They presented the case for the transformed man Simpson claimed to have become.
The victims’ families were also present, and they made their position absolutely clear. They wanted the execution to proceed. From their perspective, Simpson took two young men from them. Glenn Palmer and Anthony Jones didn’t get second chances. They didn’t get 19 years to earn degrees or write poetry. They got bullets and death.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond didn’t mince words. He called Simpson a monster who showed no genuine remorse. The AG’s office pointed to Simpson’s own statements after the shooting, to the testimony about him laughing about the crime, to the alleged attempts to kill the surviving witness.
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board consists of five members. They voted. Three members voted to deny clemency. Two voted to grant it. Simpson lost.
But there’s one more step. Governor Kevin Stitt has the final decision-making power on clemency in Oklahoma. The board’s recommendation matters, but it’s not binding. Stitt could still intervene. Here’s the context that matters: during his tenure as governor, Stitt has granted clemency to only two death row inmates. In 2021, he commuted Julius Jones’ sentence to life without parole just hours before the scheduled execution. In November 2025, he granted clemency to Tremaine Wood. Two out of many more cases that have crossed his desk. Will Stitt intervene for Kendrick Simpson? As of now, there’s no indication he will.
The Scheduled Execution
Which means that on February 12th, 2026, barring a last-minute legal intervention or gubernatorial action, Simpson will be strapped to a gurney at Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Medical personnel will insert IV lines, and Oklahoma will administer its three-drug lethal injection protocol. The families of Glenn Palmer and Anthony Jones will likely be present. Some may choose to witness. They’ve waited 20 years for this moment. For them, this is justice. This is accountability. This is the system working exactly as it was designed to work.
But there are others who see something different. They see a case where mental health evidence was excluded. They see a young man whose entire life before age 22 was marked by trauma and violence. They see someone who, by all accounts, used his time on death row to become something other than the person who fired those shots.
And they ask difficult questions. If rehabilitation is possible, why execute someone who appears rehabilitated? If trauma and mental illness played a role in the crime, why wasn’t that given full consideration? If we believe people can change, why does that belief stop at the door of the death chamber?
There are no easy answers. Glenn Palmer’s family might say their son was robbed of the chance to change, to grow, to become anything at all. Anthony Jones will never write poetry or earn a degree. London Johnson, the survivor, has to live with the memory of that night for the rest of his life.
The Broader Impact
Simpson’s story forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about how we think about crime and punishment, about whether the death penalty serves justice or simply serves vengeance, about what we owe to victims and what we owe to defendants, and about whether a society should be judged by how it treats its worst members.
Oklahoma has been one of the most active death penalty states in America. The state faced a moratorium on executions from 2015 to 2021 after a series of botched executions raised serious questions about the protocols being used. When executions resumed, Oklahoma made clear it intended to work through its backlog of death row inmates. Simpson is part of that process.
He’s not unique in his background of trauma. Many death row inmates have histories of severe childhood abuse, mental illness, poverty, and exposure to violence. The question isn’t whether Simpson’s background excuses what he did. It clearly doesn’t. The question is whether it should have mattered more in determining his sentence.
The legal system had multiple opportunities to weigh these factors. The trial court excluded certain testimony. The jury heard limited mental health evidence. Appeals courts reviewed the case and found no reversible error. The clemency board voted against him. Each stage of the system had the opportunity to say, “This case is different. This person deserves life in prison rather than death.” At each stage, the system said no.
On February 12th at 10:00 a.m., the system will reach its final conclusion. Kendrick Simpson will become a statistic, another name in the long list of people executed in Oklahoma. The 27-year-old debate over whether the death penalty serves any useful purpose will continue, likely without resolution.
Glenn Palmer’s family will bury their grief alongside whatever small measure of closure this execution might provide. Anthony Jones’s loved ones will do the same. London Johnson will continue living with the trauma of being the sole survivor of a crime that took two of his friends. And Kendrick Simpson, the boy from the Ninth Ward who survived abuse, bullets, and a hurricane, but couldn’t survive his own worst decision, will be gone.
Whether that’s justice or tragedy depends entirely on where you stand. And that question, perhaps more than any other, defines the entire death penalty debate in America.
