An inmate was executed in Oklahoma on Thursday for the 1996 murder of a dance student at the University of Oklahoma.
The case remained unresolved for years until DNA from the crime scene was matched to a guy serving life for burglary.
The 44-year-old Anthony Sanchez was declared dead after receiving an injection of three drugs at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
Even though he insisted he had nothing to do with the murder of Juli Busken, he decided not to apply for clemency to the state’s Pardon and Parole Board because Governor Kevin Stitt had shown no sign of doing so.
Sanchez was found guilty of raping and killing Juli Busken, a 21-year-old native of Benton, Arkansas, who had just finished her final semester of college when she was kidnapped on December 20, 1996, from the parking lot of her Norman apartment complex.
Busken’s body was discovered that evening in the far southeast of Oklahoma City, close to Lake Stanley Draper, bound, raped, and shot in the head.
Years later, DNA from sperm on Busken’s clothing at the crime scene was matched to Sanchez when he was serving time for a burglary conviction.
In 2006, he was found guilty and given a death sentence.
Busken’s family was not present for his execution on Thursday, but state Attorney General Gentner Drummond claimed he had spoken to them frequently.
Sanchez has consistently insisted on his innocence, and he did it once again in a phone call from execution row to The Associated Press earlier this year.
“That is fabricated DNA,” Sanchez asserted. “That is false DNA. That is not my DNA. I’ve been saying that since day one.”
However, Drummond argued that Sanchez and Busken’s murder were connected based on the DNA evidence.
His DNA was said to be “identical to the profiles created from sperm on Ms. Busken’s pants and leotard.”
Drummond recently stated, “There is no conceivable doubt that Anthony Sanchez is a brutal rapist and murderer who is deserving of the state’s harshest punishment.”
Sanchez is the third prisoner to be executed in Oklahoma this year, and there have been ten executions overall since the state began using the death sentence in 2021 after a six-year hiatus due to reservations about the procedure.
