Anthony Sanchez, a member of the Choctaw Nation, is scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma on September 21, 2023 for the 1996 murder of Juli Busken. The bigger question: IS ANTHONY SANCHEZ INNOCENT? Evidence developed in recent months now points to Anthony's father, Glen Sanchez, as the actual killer in this case.

[Petition language is below.]

BACKGROUND

UPDATE: Feb 3, 2023: Attorneys for Oklahoma death row prisoner Anthony Sanchez filed an application for post conviction relief with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals today, including a motion for discovery and a motion for an evidentiary hearing through which to present evidence of the actual innocence of Mr. Sanchez. The filing asserts that had newly discovered clear and convincing evidence been presented to the jury at trial, Anthony Sanchez would not have been convicted or sentenced to death. Today's filings are available here and speak for themselves. Updated case narrative including newly discovered evidence is here.

On December 20, 1996, Juli Busken was abducted from her apartment [allegedly raped] and murdered.  Her body was found the next day on the bank of a lake about 15 miles from her apartment.  Foreign DNA was found on her clothing.

Six years after the original crime, Anthony Sanchez was arrested for the rape of a former girlfriend and forced to give his DNA per Oklahoma law. Investigators claimed that Sanchez’s DNA was a perfect match to the DNA found on Busken’s clothing - this has never been fully evaluated by the defense. With the DNA as primary evidence (along with a mosaic of secondary circumstantial evidence), Sanchez was arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced to death for the crime.

Since the conviction, Sanchez has raised numerous issues about his conviction, including the fact that DNA evidence in the case was handled by an employee overseen by disgraced Oklahoma City Police Department chemist Joyce Gilchrist*. Gilchrist was fired from her job based on having helped prosecutors secure numerous false convictions by manipulating DNA evidence.  

According to multiple alibi witnesses, Anthony Sanchez was nowhere near Norman on the night that Juli Busken was killed (he was actually multiple towns away). Yet, prosecutors suppressed such evidence to create a narrative that Sanchez was guilty (8 years after the crime).

However, one of the pieces of evidence that they couldn’t manipulate was the original police sketch of the eyewitness.

When compared with a picture of Sanchez contemporary to 1996 as below, the two don’t look anything alike. But look at the photo of Glen Sanchez.

Sanchez is a member of the Choctaw Nation, whose members and leaders have expressed opposition to executions. While he was convicted of a crime that occurred off of Choctaw land, Sanchez is facing execution on his Native land, because the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and its execution chamber are on Choctaw territory, without the consent of the Choctaw people, who have repeatedly expressed concerns about executions taking place on their land.

Issues of concern:

1. Questions regarding evidence collection.
2. Growing doubts about multiple facets of the state's narrative in the case.
3. Questions regarding Joyce Gilchrist’s supervisory participation in DNA examination.
4. Sanchez was tried before the jury in shackles, which can create bias.
5. Concerns about multiple failures of Sanchez’s trial attorneys to challenge evidence used to convict him.
6. The execution is taking place on Choctaw land.

Please sign the petition asking Governor Stitt and the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board to do everything within their power to stop this execution.

* Around the time that Juli Busken’s DNA was being processed, supervisor Joyce Gilchrist was responsible for, “(1) missing evidence in numerous cases; (2) contamination issues due to evidence being ‘stacked all over the chemist’s area’; (3) systematic destruction of rape evidence after two years, well before the statute of limitations expired; (4) lack of peer review in many cases; and (5) the absence of proficiency testing, although such testing had been paid for,” – In one of the Oklahoma City Police Department investigative memorandums written by Captain Byron Boshell, Lab Sevices to Major Garold Spencer, Investigations Bureau (2001)