Marilyn Plantz
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Marilyn Kay Plantz (19 Oct 1960 – 1 May 2001) was executed in Oklahoma May 1. Plantz was the 711th person executed in the United States since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, for the pre meditated murder of her husband James Plantz
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[edit] Background
Marilyn Plantz was a homemaker and Sunday school teacher, James Plantz worked as a pressroom supervisor at The Oklahoman. They raised their two children in a quiet, midwestern city neighborhood.
[edit] Murder
Marilyn planned and witnessed to murder of her husband James Plantz. On Aug. 26, 1988, after Jim Plantz returned home from working the night shift, Bryson, then 18, and friend Clinton McKimble ambushed him and beat him with 2 baseball bats provided from their son's room by his wife, who also was present. McKimble, said they left him on the floor bloody and hurt, and then Marilyn Plantz looked at her husband's head injuries from the beating and remarked that it didn't look like an accident. After the beating Mckimble and Bryson loaded James into his pick up truck drove a short distance, and then set fire to the truck, James Plantz was still alive at the time.
[edit] Trial and Sentences
On October 20, prosecutors agreed to let McKimble plead guilty to murder and be sentenced to life imprisonment. As part of the agreement, he would testify against Plantz and Bryson.
Defense attorneys argued that Bryson and Plantz should have separate trials, because the defendants had inconsistent, mutually antagonistic, defenses. Oklahoma County District Judge Charles Owens ruled that they would be tried together. At the trial in March 1989, jurors took less than three hours to find Plantz and Bryson guilty of the murder of James Plantz, of conspiracy to murder, of recruiting others to help, and of arson. Neither Plantz nor Bryson testified during the trial. The next day jurors deliberated for five hours before voting in favor of death sentences for both Marilyn Plantz and William Bryson. They were each also sentenced to 100 years for recruiting others to help in the murder, 10 years for conspiracy to murder, and a 15-year sentence for burning the pickup truck.
[edit] Executions
Marilyn Kay Plantz was executed by lethal injection on the 1st May 2001.
William Clifford Bryson was executed on 15th July 2000 by lethal injection in Oklahoma.
