Oklahoma panel denies clemency for man convicted of woman’s 1995 stabbing death

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted Wednesday against recommending clemency for convicted murderer Jemaine Cannon. 

Cannon, now 51, faces execution for murdering Sharonda White Clark, a 20-year-old mother of two, in 1995 at her Tulsa apartment after escaping from an Oklahoma Department of Corrections community work center in southwest Oklahoma. 

The board voted 3-2 against recommending clemency. Board members Edward Konieczny and H. Calvin Prince III submitted pro-clemency votes. 

A Tulsa County jury convicted Cannon of stabbing to death White after escaping from the Walters Community Work Center, where Cannon was serving a 15-year sentence for a 1990 attack on an 18-year-old woman who spurned his advances.

The woman was beaten in the head with an iron, a toaster and a hammer, and left permanently disfigured. 

Prosecutors said Cannon has a violent history with girlfriends or ex-girlfriends. 

State Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who urged the board to deny clemency, called Clark’s murder “shocking” and a “horrific loss.”

“It’s time for finality in this case,” Drummond told the board. 

Cannon is scheduled to be executed July 20 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Death row inmate cites racism, self-defense in reasoning for mercy

By video, Cannon, seated at a table while wearing a dark red prison uniform and heavily shackled, asked the board for mercy.

He brought paperwork piled on the table in front of him. With poor eyesight, Cannon read statements from a paper just a couple of inches from his eyes. 

Cannon claimed Clark attacked him with a knife and he acted in self-defense. Her injuries included three stab wounds in the neck. Her carotid artery was severed, and her jugular vein was cut. 

Cannon characterized his case and previous legal troubles as racist prosecutions.

“It’s nothing more than the state attempting to blow a dog whistle and elicit a race-based emotional response from this board to get a modern-day lynching accomplished because of racial prejudice, race issues in this case,” Cannon said. 

While saying he was remorseful, Cannon clung to his self-defense claim.

“The end result was not intended,” he said. “It was not a murder.”

Cannon’s attorney, Mark Henricksen, told the board his client not only acted in self-defense, but he also suffered childhood abuse that affected his mental health. 

Cannon received poor legal defense at trial and his conviction should be attributed to a failure of due process, Henricksen said. 

“This sick, dying man should not be killed by the state of Oklahoma,” Henricksen said. “It approaches obscenity.”

Case draws anger, attention to prison system escape

After the discovery of Clark’s body in Tulsa, authorities captured Cannon two days later in Flint, Michigan. 

His case drew anger from former Gov. Frank Keating, who at the time blasted the state Corrections Department classification system that allowed Cannon to serve his 15-year sentence for a violent crime in a community setting.

After entering the prison system, Cannon was assigned to a minimum-security prison. Two years later, he was assigned to the Walters Community Work Center.

Corrections officials acknowledged that Cannon should have been at a higher security level but said space in such facilities already was filled.

Investigators said Cannon had been staying with Clark since his escape from the Walters work center. 

A loving, hard-working mother

On Wednesday, the state presented gruesome images of Clark’s fatal wounds, and said Cannon did not have injuries consistent with self-defense. 

Drummond, who recently asked the board to recommend clemency for death row inmate Richard Glossip, told members Wednesday that Cannon is a remorseless man.  

“Sharonda Clark is not to blame for her own brutal murder,” he said. “Childhood trauma is not to blame for her murder. Only Jemaine Cannon is to blame.”

Clark’s body was discovered Feb. 5, 1995, in her apartment. She was reported missing after she failed to pick her children up from a daycare center.

Her eldest daughter, Yeh-Shen White-Hicks, spoke tearfully about a loving, hard-working mother full of life and charisma.

“It’s been 28 years since my mother last dropped me and my sister off to daycare, not knowing that it would be the last time we see her and await her return,” she said. “There’s no words that can be put together to express the amount of grief and heartache her death has caused, because no child imagines a life without their parent.”