Oklahoma: Billy Don Alverson scheduled to become the first person executed in the U.S. this year

OKLAHOMA CITY - An Oklahoma death row inmate convicted of the baseball-beating death of a convenience store worker almost 16 years ago is scheduled to become the first person executed in the U.S. this year.

Billy Don Alverson, 39, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to die for the Feb, 26, 1995, death of 30-year-old Richard Yost, the night manager of a convenience store in Tulsa. Yost's bound and beaten body was discovered on the blood-soaked floor of the store's cooler.

If Alverson's execution moves forward as planned at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester on Thursday, it would be the first in the U.S. in 2011, according to Kenneth England, spokesman for the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. Seventeen other executions are scheduled across the country, including another one in Oklahoma next week, England said.

Jeffrey David Matthews, 38, is scheduled to be executed Tuesday for the January 1994 murder of 77-year-old Otis Earl Short, Matthews' great-uncle, during a robbery of Short's home.

Alverson would be the second inmate executed in Oklahoma with a combination of lethal drugs that includes a sedative commonly used to euthanize animals.

John David Duty, 58, was executed on Dec. 16 after a nationwide shortage of a key ingredient in the lethal injection protocol forced the state to alter the formula. Duty was believed to be the first person in the U.S. to be executed using that drug.

Oklahoma and several other states have used the barbiturate sodium thiopental to put an inmate to sleep, followed by two other drugs — pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes muscles, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. But the only U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental, Hospira Inc., said there was a shortage of the drug due to problems with its raw-material providers. The company has said new batches could be available in the first quarter of this year.

Alverson is one of four men who were convicted of first-degree murder in Yost's death. Prosecutors have said Yost received 54 blows from the baseball bat and that all four men participated in the beating, although Alverson has said he never hit Yost.

Three of Alverson's co-defendants were also sentenced to death and one, 31-year-old Darwin Brown, was executed in January 2009.

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 in December to deny clemency for Alverson.

Source: WinnipegFreePress, January 6, 2011