OKLAHOMA CITY – Attorney General Scott Pruitt yesterday filed a request for the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set an execution date for Tulsa Country death row inmate Michael Bascum Selsor, 57.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied the inmate’s final appeal on February 21, 2012.
Selsor was convicted and sentenced to death for the first-degree murder of Clayton Chandler, 55, and shooting with the intent to kill Ina Morris, 20, on Sept. 15, 1975.
According to the report, Chandler suffered six gunshot wounds and was killed during a robbery of a Tulsa convenience store. Morris, who was shot by Selsor’s accomplice, Richard Eugene Dodson, 71, was shot multiple times, but survived.
In 1976, Selsor was tried by a jury and sentenced to death. Later that same year, Oklahoma’s death penalty was ruled unconstitutional by the U. S. Supreme Court and the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals adjusted Selsor’s sentence to life without the possibility of parole.
In 1996, the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Selsor’s conviction. During a retrial in 1998, Selsor was again convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Selsor also is serving a 20-year sentence for shooting with intent to kill.
Dodson was acquitted for the murder of Chandler. However, he was convicted of robbery and shooting with intent to kill Morris after a former felony conviction. Dodson was sentenced to 50 years for armed robbery, and 199 years for shooting with intent to kill.
Pruitt asked the court to set the date for Selsor’s execution “sixty days after February 21, 2012, or the earliest date the court deems fit.”