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Oklahoma Executes Ronald Lott for Two Murders That First Sent Robert Miller Jr. to Death Row Until DNA Cleared Him

Lott, 53, was convicted of raping and killing two elderly Oklahoma City women in 1986 and 1987. He made no final statement.

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Illustration of a floodlit concrete prison wall and guard tower on a frosty December night. Not the actual prison.

Robert Lee Miller Jr. spent years on death row for the murders of two elderly Oklahoma City women before DNA pointed to Ronald Clinton Lott. On December 10, 2013, Oklahoma executed Lott.

Lott, 53, was pronounced dead at 6:06 p.m. after a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie said. He made no final statement. He was the fifth person executed in Oklahoma in 2013. "Ronald Lott was sentenced to death by a jury of his peers for the heinous and unconscionable acts he committed against Anna and Zelma in their homes," Attorney General Scott Pruitt said in a statement.

Anna Laura Fowler, 83, was attacked in her home on September 2, 1986, and Zelma Cutler, 93, in the early morning hours of January 11, 1987; both women lived alone, and both died of asphyxiation, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Miller was first arrested, charged and convicted of both murders, and he served 11 years, seven of them on death row, before DNA evidence led authorities to Lott; he was released in 1998. An Oklahoma jury convicted Lott of two counts of first-degree murder, and of raping the women, in December 2001, and he was sentenced to death on both counts in January 2002. The Tenth Circuit later affirmed the denial of his federal habeas petition.

The Tenth Circuit gave Zelma Cutler's age as 93, while Reuters reported that she was 90.

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