Protesters hold vigil outside governor's mansion as Allen is executed

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- The gates of the governor's mansion were the final, futile battlefield for protesters hoping to spare the life of condemned killer Wanda Jean Allen.

Gov. Frank Keating denied a stay of execution for Allen Thursday night -- about four hours before she was executed at 9:21 p.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

As the execution was announced, the Rev. Jesse Jackson led about 200 people in a vigil outside Keating's home next to the state Capitol.

The crowd, holding candles and flashlights, was mostly silent when Jackson announced Allen's death. Several people cried.

"The state has carried out a planned, organized killing of a mentally retarded woman when there was strong evidence that she was executed for a killing she did not plan," Jackson said.

"The governor has chosen politics over his religion and I'm deeply disappointed at the governor today."

The crowd disbursed peacefully shortly after the execution, but Jackson urged people to continue the protests throughout the coming weeks, in which eight more people are scheduled to be executed in Oklahoma.

Earlier in the evening, after Keating's decision not to grant a stay of execution, the protesters held anti-death penalty banners and chanted loudly.

"Hey Keating, what do you say? How many people have to die today?" the crowd chanted at one point.

Gerarda Welch Kelcy said she heard the news of Keating's decision when she arrived at the mansion.

"I'm very disappointed, I'm really surprised," Kelcy said.

"The governor is a Catholic and I'm a Catholic. I just don't believe this is where his heart is."

Allen, 41, was sentenced to death for the 1988 killing of Gloria Leathers, her lesbian lover.

Jackson had wanted to witness the execution, but state officials denied his request to watch the execution, saying he missed the deadline for getting on the witness list.

Unlike the night before, which saw Jackson and 27 others get arrested for trespassing in a protest at the prison that had held Allen, police made no arrests Thursday.

Outside the prison gates in McAlester, pro- and anti-death penalty groups gathered in clusters, talking in low voices and shivering in the cold.

Three men and a woman stood in silence. The woman said they were there to show support for the death penalty.

"I believe in forgiveness, but I also believe in justice and that's all I want to say," she said, declining to give her name.

The execution also drew international attention.

"I think it's primitive behavior extremely," said Belgian television journalist Elisabeth Burdot, who was at the prison to work on a program about the death penalty. "I don't understand how a state can kill."

Roosevelt Milton, president of the Oklahoma City chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Keating's decision not to issue a stay of execution in the case might provide some tension Monday morning when the governor tolls a bell outside the Capitol to signal the Martin Luther King Jr.

holiday.

"The governor may get a standing boo, I don't know. But if he does he would deserve it," Milton said.

Milton called Keating "a hard-hearted and sometimes hard-headed man," but said his decision not to grant clemency was not a surprise.

Protester Ellen Wisdom, of Norman, said it was Oklahoma's embarrassment that seven others besides Allen were scheduled to be executed in the next four weeks.

"I think it's appalling the number of people we're willing to execute in this state," she said.