McALESTER — A man convicted in the 1995 child abuse death of an 8-year-old boy is scheduled to become the second person to be executed this year in Oklahoma.
Forty-eight-year-old Donald Gilson is set to receive a lethal injection at 6 p.m. Thursday inside the death chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma attorney general's office said Gilson has no final appeals pending.
Gilson was convicted of first-degree murder in 1998 for the death of his girlfriend's son, 8-year-old Shane Coffman. The boy's battered remains were found in an abandoned freezer outside a mobile home in rural Cleveland County.
An autopsy on the boy's skeletal remains showed two fractures to his skull, a tooth missing from his right jaw and fractures to his collarbone, shoulder blades, ribs, legs and spine.
Four other children who lived with Gilson and his girlfriend, Bertha Jean Coffman, in a mobile home in Cleveland County showed various signs of abuse, and two of the children were emaciated and had trouble walking, court records show.
All four surviving children and other members of Coffman's family were planning to witness Gilson's execution.
"Shane Coffman was only 8 years old when he died at the hands of Donald Gilson," Attorney General Drew Edmondson said in a statement. "My thoughts today are with the survivors of this crime, Shane's siblings."
On the day Shane Coffman died, one of the children told investigators Gilson beat the boy with a board and then placed him in a bathtub as punishment for going to the bathroom on the living room rug, according to court records. The children told authorities they heard Shane screaming while in the bathroom with both Gilson and Bertha Coffman.
Gilson's attorneys have not returned several telephone messages, but they have argued previously that there is some doubt as to whether Gilson or Bertha Coffman actually killed the boy.
Bertha Coffman entered an Alford plea in the case and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But Cliff Winkler, a former Cleveland County Sheriff's Office investigator who worked the case, said he remains confident that Gilson was responsible for Shane's death.
"I have no doubt in my mind about that," Winkler said. "The other children told me that he was the main abuser. They said, 'Mama spanks us sometimes, but he beats us.'"
"And the way that child's bones were broken, I'm not sure a woman could hit a child hard enough to do that kind of damage."
On Thursday, Gilson received his last meal at the prison — a cheeseburger, chili-cheese french fries and a chocolate shake from Chili's restaurant.
