Death of an American prisoner sentenced to death in Oklahoma Prison

According to American media reports, the Oklahoma Department of Prisons announced that Byron Shepard, a 43-year-old American prisoner scheduled to be executed by lethal injection, died in his state prison cell.

The Oklahoma Department of Prisons said in a statement that the death case is being investigated and that the official cause of the inmate death will be announced by the medical examiner's office because there were no obvious physical injuries or trauma.

Shepard's attorneys had just started the federal court appeal process for his death sentence.

Oklahoma currently has 30 men and one woman on its death row, and on March 20, 2025, the state plans to execute one of them. Oklahoma carried out four executions in 2024; executions in the state are carried out by lethal injection.

More than 2,100 death row inmates and others impacted by their cases have received longer prison sentences, which has caused a great deal of uncertainty and sparked serious concerns about the American legal system.

The death penalty is currently applied in 27 of the 50 states and the District of Columbia; lethal injection is used for the majority of executions in the United States; however, due to limited access to the drugs required for lethal injection, several states have legalized other methods, including firing squads, electric chairs, and nitrogen gas asphyxiation.