Execution Date Sought

Monday, June 18th 2007, 3:52 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Attorney General Drew Edmondson asked a state court Monday to set an execution date for Frank Duane Welch, who was convicted of killing a Norman woman in 1987. Edmondson acted after the U.S. Supreme Court denied Welch's final appeal.

The attorney general asked the Court of Criminal Appeals to set an execution date for Welch 60 days from Monday or the earliest date deemed fit by the court.

Welch was convicted in the strangulation death of 29-year-old Jo Talley Cooper in a case that was unsolved for a decade.

After Welch was linked to an almost identical unsolved murder, he was tied to the Cooper case through DNA evidence.