Phillip Hancock is on death row in Oklahoma for the 2001 murders of Robert Jett and James Lynch and is scheduled for execution on November 30, 2023. On November 8, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 to recommend clemency. Now it is up to Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt to accept the recommendation and grab clemency.

Hancock has always claimed self defense in his shootings of the victims in this case, and on October 4, 2023, his attorneys filed a motion in federal court seeking DNA testing which could prove Hancock's claims of self defense.

According to a recent evaluation by clinical psychologist and trauma expert Dr. Katherine Porterfield, Hancock’s actions at Jett’s house can only be understood in the context of his lifetime of serious trauma. Throughout Hancock’s childhood, he experienced emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, emotional neglect, his mother being treated violently, and parental mental illness. These factors negatively impacted Hancock’s brain development in childhood and significantly increased the likelihood of mental health difficulties.

In his adolescent years, Hancock went on to suffer multiple, serious sexual and physical assaults, including an attack by two men when Hancock was thirteen, a sexual assault by a man at a truck stop when he was fourteen, and a gang rape in prison when he was nineteen. Each event, with no proper care or treatment, added to Hancock’s neurophysiological trauma, creating a vulnerability to live in an almost constant state of threat reactivity to his environment. His actions in response to Jett’s attack stemmed from his immediate fight or flight reaction to the threat of rape, captivity, and death, threats that activated his lifelong bodily and psychic experiences of severe victimization. Hancock’s lifelong adverse experiences also help explain why he did not hurt Tarp: because she posed no threat to him.

The Jury Foreperson No Longer Stands By Her Verdict

As a result of counsel’s ineffectiveness, the jury never heard evidence about the extent of the victims’ gang status and reputations for violence. Nor did the jury know the full extent of Hancock’s trauma history or the profound impacts it had on his mental health and reaction to threats. The jury also was unaware that Quick had ordered the assault against Hancock.

After learning about some of this information, the jury foreperson signed a sworn statement calling her verdict into doubt. The juror said knowing about Quick’s role in the incident “makes me want to now step forward and even attend a clemency or appeal hearing.” She added, “the jury should have heard that part of the story, if it would change things for Phil.”

Oklahoma's aggressive execution schedule marks it as an outlier in its use of the death penalty while the majority of other states are on a downward trend of executions. In the last few years, Oklahoma has been one of only a handful of states that have carried out death sentences - and it continues to do so targeting the poor, the mentally ill and people of color.

This particular execution is just one in a series of 25 executions scheduled by Oklahoma in the coming months, despite serious concerns around the state's lethal injection protocols and drugs.

Please sign the petition asking Governor Stitt and the Pardon and Parole Board to do everything within their power to ensure this execution does not go forward, and to seek a path to clemency in the case.