On September 10, 1990 Charles Troy Coleman was put to death by lethal
injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Coleman's execution was
the first in the state in more than 25 years, generating significant m
edia coverage and providing a unique opportunity to assess the impact
of the state's return to executing capital offenders. Interrupted time
-series analyses are performed with weekly data from the UCR Supplemen
tal Homicide Reports for the state for the period January 1989 through
December 1991. Analyses are performed for the total level of criminal
homicides and homicides disaggregated into two types of murder-felony
murder and stranger homicides-testing hypotheses that predict opposin
g impacts for each type of homicide. As predicted, no evidence of a de
terrent or a brutalization effect is found for criminal homicides in g
eneral. Similarly, the predicted deterrent effect of the execution on
the level of felony murders is not observed Evidence of the predicted
brutalization effect on the level of stranger homicides is observed, h
owever. Supplementary analyses on further offense disaggregations cont
inue to support these initial findings and permit a more coherent inte
rpretation of the results.