Just In: Sean Sellers: First Juvenile Executed For A Crime Committed At The Age Of 16 Since 1959…

On February 4th, 1999, after spending more than 13 years on death row, Shaun Sers was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in Mallister. He was 29 years old. In this video, we will talk about what happened, his last words, and his last meal. But to uncover the events of that fateful night and why Shawn ended up being executed, we have to go back to a troubled teenager in 1985 and a descent into Satanism that would end in three brutal murders.

 Sha Richard Sers was born on May 18th, 1969 in Corkran, California. His mother, Vonda Blackwell, was only 16 years old when she gave birth to him. His father, Richard Sers, was 17, an unstable alcoholic who would disappear from Shaun’s life when the boy was just 3 years old. Vonda and Richard had married in November 1968, barely out of high school themselves, a two teenagers trying to raise a child they weren’t prepared for.

 The marriage lasted less than 4 years before it fell apart. When Vonda remarried a truck driver named Paul Bellafato, Shawn gained a stepfather, but lost what little stability he had. Paul and Vonda drove cross-country halls for a living, which meant they were gone for weeks at a time. Shawn was constantly shuttled between relatives.

 His grandfather Jim Blackwell, his grandmother, Geneva, greatgrandparents, various aunts and uncles. He would stay with them for three or four weeks while his mother and stepfather made money on the road. By the time Shawn turned 16, he had moved approximately 30 times. California to Oklahoma to Colorado and back again.

 New schools, new faces, new people he would never see again once his parents decided to move. Aawn learned early not to make friends because he would just have to leave them behind. The abuse started young. Shawn’s mother beat him. His grandfather, Jim Blackwell, beat him. But the psychological abuse was worse. When Shawn was 12 or 13 years old, he struggled with bed wetting, a common sign of childhood trauma.

 An uncle punished him by forcing him to wear soiled diapers on his head all day. If Shawn wet the bed two nights in a row, he had to walk around the house with a soiled diaper strapped to his head as a form of humiliation. Another uncle took Shawn hunting and tried to teach him how to kill animals by stepping on their heads and pulling their legs until the head tore off.

 [snorts] When Shawn refused and cried, the uncle called him a wimp. His stepfather chastised him for being weak. Shawn also suffered a head injury during childhood that caused brain damage. This would be confirmed years later through QEG testing, but at the time, no one noticed or cared. Shawn began hearing voices in his head when he was six or seven years old.

Critical voices, angry voices, voices that told him he was worthless, that no one loved him, that he should hurt people. Every time his mother left him with relatives and drove away in the truck, Shawn would smile and wave goodbye. Then he would walk to the bathroom, close the door, and cry alone where no one could see him.

 He was terrified of being abandoned permanently, convinced that one day his mother would leave and never come back. Despite all of this, Shawn appeared functional on the surface. He was intelligent, an A student who performed well academically. He was a top athlete. Friends and relatives described him as courteous and polite.

 But inside, Shaun Sers was emotionally disturbed and detaching from reality. In 1984, when Shawn was 15 years old, he began reading the Satanic Bible by Anton Ley. He read it hundreds of times, memorizing passages, absorbing the philosophy. Shawn became very involved in Satanism. He performed rituals in his bedroom late at night.

 He drank his own blood, cutting himself and filling a cup, believing it would give him power. He created a demon he called Ezerate, a human- turned demon that Shawn believed spoke to him and guided his actions. In February 1985, Shawn wrote a declaration renouncing God. And pledging himself to Satan. I renounce God. I renounce Christ. I will serve only Satan.

 Hail Satan. He made a blood pact, cutting his hand and signing his name in blood. I he sought affiliation with a local coven of Satanists. Shawn began using amphetamines to stay awake for long periods so he could perform satanic rituals without interruption. He would stay up for days high on speed listening to the voices in his head inviting demons into his body.

 Shawn later described this time in his life. I was inviting demons into my body and I was hearing all these voices in my head. They were telling me stuff like, “Shoot the class. Kill everyone in the class.” I truly thought it was an honest way to live and the rituals of it would enable me to control my life.

 Shawn began self-mutilating, stabbing sharp objects into his own scalp. He had dreams and fantasies of killing people, of mutilating them, of watching them die. These thoughts increasingly focused on his parents. He hated his mother. He hated his stepfather. and the voices told him he should kill them. Shawn had a best friend named Richard Howard, another 17-year-old who was drawn to the darkness Shawn embraced.

 The two boys talked constantly about murder, rape, torture, violence. They discussed how it would feel to kill someone. They wondered what it was like to watch the life drain out of a person’s eyes. They fantasized about committing the perfect murder and getting away with it. Shawn told Richard he wanted to see what it feels like to kill somebody.

 It wasn’t about anger. It wasn’t about revenge. It was pure curiosity. Shawn wanted to know if taking a human life would make him feel powerful, make him feel alive. Richard agreed to help him. The two boys decided they would kill someone together just to see what it felt like. They chose their victim carefully.

 Robert Paul Bower was 35 years old, a clerk at a Circle K convenience store on Northwest 122nd Street and Council Road in Oklahoma City. About a week before the murder, Shawn and Richard had tried to buy beer at the store, but Bower refused to sell to the underage teenagers. It was a minor inconvenience, something most people would forget.

 But Shawn didn’t forget. He saw it as a sign. Bower had disrespected them. Bower had refused them. Bower would be the one to die. On the night of September 8th, 1985, Shawn and Richard prepared for the murder. They performed a satanic ritual, calling on dark forces to guide them, asking for protection and power.

 Richard grabbed his grandfather’s 357 Magnum revolver and loaded five shells into the chamber. He also took his brother’s 22 rifle as backup. The two boys drove to the Circle K. I adrenaline pumping, hands shaking, hearts racing. This was it. They were going to kill someone. They were going to cross a line that could never be uncrossed.

When they walked into the store, Robert Bower was standing behind the counter raising a cup of coffee to his lips. He had no idea he was about to die. Shawn pointed the.357 Magnum at Bower’s head and pulled the trigger. The first shot missed. The bullet tore through the air and slammed into the wall behind Bower.

Bower dropped the coffee cup and ran toward the back of the store, desperate to escape. According to Shawn’s version of events, Richard Howard blocked Bower from exiting and screamed at Shawn to do it, to finish what he started. Shawn raised the gun again, aimed at the back of Bower’s head, and fired.

 The bullet struck Bower in the skull, and he dropped to the floor, dead. A blood pulled around his body. The coffee he had been drinking just seconds earlier, spilled across the counter. Robert Bower, a 35-year-old convenience store clerk who had refused to sell beer to two teenagers, was dead. And Sha Sers started giggling.

 He couldn’t stop laughing. It was like a fantastic prank, Shawn would later say, since Balor had no clue what we’d come there for. Shawn felt no guilt, no remorse, no horror at what he had just done. He felt superior. He felt powerful. He had killed a man and gotten away with it. Shawn and Richard left the store, got into their car, and drove home.

 Police responded to the scene and began investigating, but they had no suspects. Shawn and Richard were never questioned. The case went cold. For the next 6 months, Shawn walked around school, went to work, hung out with friends. I and carried the secret knowledge that he was a killer. When I was that person, that murderer, I felt superior.

 Shawn would later write in a confession. I looked down on people with the secret knowledge that I had killed and was capable of killing them, too. But Shawn wasn’t satisfied. Killing Robert Bower had answered one question. What does it feel like to kill someone? But it had created another. Could he do it again? Could he kill someone he knew? Could he kill someone he was supposed to love? The voices in his head told him yes.

 The demons told him his parents needed to die. And Shawn started planning their murders. Shawn hated his mother, Vonda. She interfered in his relationship with his girlfriend, a high school dropout Vonda didn’t approve of. She tried to control his life. She told him what to do, where to go, who to see. Shawn resented her, and the more he thought about it, the more he convinced himself that killing her was the only solution.

 He decided to poison her first. Shawn went to a store and bought rat poison. He brought it home, mixed it into his mother’s coffee, and served it to her. Vonda drank the coffee. Shawn waited for her to collapse, to clutch her stomach, to start convulsing, but nothing happened. He served her a second cup of coffee laced with rat poison.

 She drank it. Still nothing. Shawn served her a third cup. Three cups of coffee, all laced with rat poison, and Vonda Bellofato didn’t even get sick. The poison had failed. Shawn would have to try a different method. Over the next several days, Shawn took amphetamines to stay awake. He smoked marijuana.

 He performed occult rituals, calling on demons to give him strength. He later said there was nothing but cold hatred in him during this time. He felt empty inside, disconnected from his emotions, incapable of feeling anything except rage. And then in the early morning hours of March 5th, 1986, Shawn decided it was time.

 He waited until his mother and stepfather went to bed. He listened for their breathing to slow for the sounds of sleep to fill the house. Then Shawn got up, stripped down to nothing but black underwear, a calculated decision to avoid getting blood on his clothing, and retrieved his stepfather’s 444 caliber revolver from their bedroom drawer.

 He crept into his parents’ bedroom, moving slowly, quietly, making sure they didn’t wake up. Paul Bellifado was asleep on his side, his back to the door. Vonda was beside him. Shawn raised the revolver, aimed at the back of Paul’s head, and fired. The gunshot shattered the silence. Paul’s body jerked once, then went still.

 Blood sprayed across the pillow, but the noise had woken Vonda. She began to stir, her body rising slightly as her brain tried to process what was happening. Shawn didn’t hesitate. He turned the gun on his mother and fired. The bullet struck her in the back of the head, but Vonda was still moving, still conscious. Shawn fired again, this time, hitting her in the face.

 Vonda Bellafato collapsed back onto the bed, dead. Shawn stood in the doorway for a moment, staring at the bodies of his mother and stepfather, blood soaking into the sheets, the smell of gunpowder hanging in the air. He felt nothing. No guilt, no sadness, just cold satisfaction. He had done it. He had killed them.

 And now he needed to make it look like someone else had committed the murders. Aawn carefully staged the crime scene to look like an intruder had broken in and killed his parents. He wanted to fake surprise when he discovered the bodies the next morning to make it seem like he had no idea what happened. After arranging everything, Shawn left the house and drove to Richard Howard’s home.

 He knocked on the door and when Richard answered, Shawn confessed. “I killed them,” Shawn said. “I shot my mom and stepdad.” Richard stared at him, shocked. Shawn had actually done it. He had killed his own parents. The next morning, police were called to the Bellato home. When they arrived and saw the crime scene, they immediately suspected Shawn.

 Just one day before the murders, a school director had contacted detective Ron Mitchell about an essay Shawn had turned in that began with a quote from the Satanic Bible. As the timing was too suspicious, police questioned Shawn, and it didn’t take long for the truth to come out. Shawn confessed to killing his parents. Then he confessed to something else.

 He had also killed Robert Bower, the Circle K clerk, 6 months earlier. Police were stunned. This 16-year-old boy had committed three murders, two in one night, and he showed no remorse. Shawn was arrested and charged with three counts of first-degree murder. Richard Howard was also arrested and initially charged with first-degree murder for his role in the Robert Bower killing.

 But prosecutors made a deal. They dismissed the charge against Richard in exchange for his testimony against Shawn. Richard would receive a 5-year suspended sentence for being an accessory after the fact. All he had to do was tell the jury what Shawn had said and done. Aishan Sers went to trial in September 1986.

He was 16 years old, facing the death penalty for murders he had committed when he was 15 and 16. The defense team faced an impossible challenge. Their client had confessed to everything. The evidence was overwhelming. The only strategy they had was to argue that Shawn was not responsible for his actions because he had been possessed by demons.

 The defense presented a Satanism and demonic possession defense. They introduced Shaun’s written declarations renouncing God and pledging allegiance to Satan. They showed the jury evidence of his blood rituals, his self-mutilation, his obsession with the occult. They argued that Shawn had been addicted to the game Dungeons and Dragons and that this addiction had disconnected him from reality and made him incapable of understanding right from wrong.

 A psychiatric expert testified that Shawn was legally unconscious at the time of all three killings and therefore incapable of forming the intent required for first-degree murder. The defense portrayed Shawn as a victim, a troubled teenager who had been manipulated by dark forces beyond his control. But the prosecution had a different story.

District Attorney Robert Macy and Judge Charles Owens dismissed the Satanism claims as unreliable excuses. They pointed to Richard Howard’s testimony. Howard told the jury that Shawn had said he wanted to see what it feels like to kill somebody. Howard testified that after the parent murders, Shawn had come to his house and confessed, showing no emotion, no regret.

 The prosecution argued that Shawn knew exactly what he was doing. He had planned the murders. He had staged the crime scene. He had tried to poison his mother first, and when that didn’t work, he shot her. This wasn’t demonic possession. This was coldblooded murder. The jury deliberated and returned with a verdict.

 Guilty on all three counts of firstdegree murder. Now came the sentencing phase where the jury would decide if Shawn should be sentenced to death or life in prison with the possibility of parole. Oklahoma law at the time did not offer life without parole as an option. That wouldn’t become law until 1987, one year too late for Sha Sers.

 The jury had only two choices. Life with the possibility of parole, which could mean Shawn would be released in as little as 7 to 15 years, or death. One juror later said that the fear Shawn might be parrolled in such a short time influenced their decision. Other jurors denied this was part of their deliberations, but the result was the same.

 On October 2nd, 1986, the jury sentenced Shaun Sers to death. He was 16 years old when he received the death sentence. Judge Daniel handed down the sentence, and Shawn was transported to death row at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. There was a problem with Shaun’s defense, though. The public defender had provided only $750 to spend on expert witnesses fees, travel, expenses, and lodging combined.

It was a shockingly small amount of money for a capital murder case, and it meant the defense couldn’t afford the kind of expert testimony that might have made a difference. But by the time this became an issue, Shawn was already on death row, and he would spend the next 13 years there waiting to die. I something happened to Sha Sers during those 13 years on death row.

 He converted to Christianity. According to Shawn, he had a profound spiritual awakening. He claimed that in a moment of desperation, he cried out to God for forgiveness and God answered him. Shawn said he felt a peace he had never experienced before, a love that filled the emptiness inside him. He began reading the Bible, attending chapel services, and ministering to other inmates.

 Shawn became what prison officials called an exemplary prisoner. He had no incidents on his disciplinary record. He spent his time writing and creating artwork to help others learn from his mistakes. He made videos that were shown worldwide about the dangers of Satanism and the occult. He ministered to thousands of teenagers through correspondence.

 I warning them not to make the same mistakes he had made. In 1989, Shawn published a book called Web of Darkness, an autobiography published by a Christian book publisher. The book detailed his progression into Satanism from adolescence and positioned itself as a direct warning against occult involvement among youth.

 Shawn portrayed Satanism as a manipulative web of darkness that exploited rebellious teenagers with entry points being heavy metal music, role- playinging games like Dungeons and Dragons, and new age philosophies. Judge Charles Owens and District Attorney Robert Macy dismissed the book as unreliable, saying it misrepresented Shaun’s true motives.

 They believed he was manipulating people using Christianity as a tool to gain sympathy and avoid execution. Shawn also published a book called Shouadori, a collection of love stories and poems. It was self-published and sold via a Friends of Sha sellers website for $10.95 plus shipping. Friends of Shawn paid about $1,500 to publish the book and got only about $100 back, losing $1,400 in the process.

 An Oklahoma grand jury investigated whether this violated state law, barring defendants from profiting from their crimes, but no indictment was issued. Shawn even had an internet website created on his behalf, an unusual thing for a death row inmate in the 1990s. The website included a full confession of the murders and lengthy journal entries Shawn had kept.

 In his confession, Shawn wrote that he had laughed after shooting Robert Bower, that it had felt like a fantastic prank. He described his descent into Satanism in detail, how he had invited demons into his body. I how he had heard voices telling him to kill, but he also wrote about his conversion to Christianity, about how God had forgiven him and given him a new purpose.

Sha’s step siblings didn’t believe any of it. They were convinced his conversion was fake, a manipulation designed to gain clemency and avoid execution. Of all his surviving family members, only his stepgrandfather believed Shaun’s conversion was sincere. The prison chaplain also believed Shawn had truly converted.

 But for most people, the question remained. Was Sha Sers truly redeemed or was he using Christianity to escape the consequences of his actions? In 1992, 6 years after his trial, three mental health professionals diagnosed Shawn with multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder. Medical testing revealed that Shawn had brain damage from his childhood head injury.

 A quantitative electroinsphilogram or QEG showed that Shaun’s brain activity dramatically changed with each of his alter personalities, indicating he had at least three distinct identities living inside him. An evoked potential test, which relies on biological signals that cannot be falsified, confirmed the QEG findings. Two doctors separately spoke to two of Shaun’s alter personalities.

 One was called Dany, who demonstrated he was left-handed, even though Shawn was right-handed. The other was called the controller. The doctors concluded that Shawn had suffered from multiple personality disorder at the time of the killings and still suffered from it. This was massive. If Shawn truly had MPD and was in the grip of an alter personality when he committed the murders, he might be factually innocent.

He might not have been in control of his actions. But there was a problem. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals refused to consider the MPD evidence. They ruled it was newly discovered evidence that came too late. They said Shawn should have raised this issue during his original trial and because he didn’t, it was procedurally barred.

 The case went to federal court. On January 23rd, 1998, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision that was both troubling and devastating. The judges acknowledged the uncontroverted clinical evidence proving Shawn suffered from MPD. They noted that MPD was virtually unknown at the time of Shaun’s trial, which is why it wasn’t diagnosed earlier.

 They stated that Shaun’s illness is such that he may be able to prove his factual innocence of those crimes. But despite all of this, the court said they couldn’t intervene due to the limited nature of federal habius corpus relief and procedural defaults under the anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act. The court was powerless.

 They issued an invitation for executive clemency and for state courts to reconsider, but they upheld the death sentence. Not everyone believed the MPD diagnosis was real. Some psychiatric experts scoffed at it, arguing that any true mental illness would have been diagnosed soon after Shawn’s arrest, not 7 years later. Prison officials claimed they had seen Shawn rehearsing evidence of mental illness and receiving coaching from his attorneys.

Richard Howard, Sha’s accomplice, I wrote that the only thing that worried Shawn was getting caught. Howard said he had seen no evidence of multiple personalities. The debate raged on. Was Sha Sers a manipulative killer using mental illness and Christianity to escape justice? Or was he a severely damaged teenager with brain damage and untreated mental disorders who had committed horrific crimes while not in control of his own mind? The courts ultimately decided it didn’t matter.

 The procedural rules prevented them from considering the evidence. So Sha’s execution would proceed. On January 27th, 1999, Shawn appeared before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board for a clemency hearing. The hearing was held at the Jackie Brandon Correctional Center in Mallister. Shawn made his case for mercy.

 He talked about his Christian conversion. He talked about his age at the time of the crimes. He talked about the Satanism that had consumed his teenage years. He presented the MPD evidence. One of the jurors who had sentenced Shawn to death, Diana Crown, spoke on his behalf. She told the board that the jury had been given only two choices, life with the possibility of parole or death.

 She said if life without parole had been an option, the jury might have chosen differently. But the pardon and parole board was not swayed. They were influenced by the prison officials statements about Shawn rehearsing his mental illness. They were troubled by the lengthy delay in diagnosing MPD. They considered Richard Howard’s statement that he had seen no evidence of multiple personalities.

 The board voted 5 to zero to deny clemency. The decision sparked international outrage. The Amnesty International USA flagged Shaun’s case as urgent and asked supporters worldwide to write letters to Oklahoma Governor Frank Keiting. Human Rights Watch condemned the decision to uphold the sentence on narrow procedural grounds despite the acknowledged MPD evidence.

 Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Archbishop of South Africa wrote to Governor Keading citing the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child. The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty protested, saying, “The sellers’s case represents everything that is wrong with the juvenile death penalty. He was clearly a troubled kid, and no one noticed when it mattered.

” But Governor Frank Keading, a Republican, publicly stated he would not pardon Shawn. In a written response, Kading said he couldn’t commute the death sentence without a recommendation from the pardon and parole board. Since the board had voted 5 to zero against clemency, there was nothing he could do. Two days before his scheduled execution, Shawn filed two final appeals.

 The first made in federal district court accused the pardon and parole board of violating his civil rights, claiming the board’s decisions were not impartial and were capricious. The appeal was denied. The second appeal went to the US Supreme Court. The court declined to hear the case. All legal avenues were exhausted.

Sha Sers would be executed as scheduled. February 4th, 1999. Shaun Sers woke knowing this was his last day on Earth. He had spent the last 7 years of his life in Hunit, a maximum security unit within the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. It was effectively solitary confinement in windowless concrete cells underground.

Amnesty International had concluded that the conditions amounted to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, violating international standards. Shawn had spent his entire adult life on death row from age 16 to age 29. In his final days, Shawn wrote a poem on the back of a painting. Colors fading, walls are bright, grayness now encroaches.

 Enter dimity, walk the night, death at last approaches. Colors fading, brushes quiet, a palm placed to the chest. Colors fading and silent riot, a life is laid to rest. He also wrote about watching the movie Dead Man Walking 3 weeks prior. Shawn said he felt little compassion for the main character who repents half-heartedly 20 minutes before his execution, more out of fear than sorrow.

We Shawn wrote that Oklahoma’s death row was filled with such people who give nothing and stand for nothing. They don’t think or care about what they did. It’s not good enough to repent the day you die. Shawn wrote, “He believed his conversion had happened years earlier, that his faith was real, that he had genuinely changed.

 But his step siblings didn’t believe him. They were waiting to watch him die. For his last meal, Sha Sers requested Chinese food. He ate egg rolls, sweet and sour shrimp, and batter fried shrimp. He spent most of his final day visiting with about 10 friends he had met since entering prison in 1986. According to prison spokesman Jason Clark, Shawn struggled to control his emotions as the execution approached.

 He was trying to keep from sobbing and knowing that in just a few hours he would be strapped to a gurnie and injected with poison. At 700 p.m. Shaun’s final appeal to the US Supreme Court was denied. There would be no lastminute reprieve, no stay of execution. Shaun Sers would die. Shortly after midnight, Shawn was escorted from his holding cell to the execution chamber.

 The walk was short, just a few steps, but for Shawn, it must have felt like an eternity. Six witnesses were present to watch him die. His step siblings were there. The family of his mother and stepfather, people who hated him and wanted to see justice served. No one attended the execution on Shaun’s behalf.

 He would die alone just as he had lived much of his life. Shawn was strapped to a gurnie, his arms extended, IV lines inserted into both arms. The drugs were prepared, poisons designed to put him to sleep. They stop his breathing and then stop his heart. Before the injection began, warden Gary Gibson asked Shawn if he had any final words.

 Shawn turned his head toward the witness window where his step siblings sat watching. His voice was loud and clear as he spoke. “All the people that are hating me right now and are here waiting to see me die, when you wake up in the morning, you’re not going to feel any different. you’re going to hate me just as much tomorrow as tonight.

” It was a shocking statement. Shawn didn’t apologize. He didn’t mention his mother. He didn’t express remorse. Instead, he told his step siblings that watching him die wouldn’t bring them peace. His stepsister, Noel Terry, would later say she was outraged. He basically addressed the fact that we would still feel the same. she said.

 H it is very presumptuous that he would know how we would still feel. But Shawn wasn’t finished. He turned to warden Gary Gibson and said, “Here I come, father. I’m coming home.” Then he looked at the warden again and said, “Let’s do it, Gary. Let’s get it on.” As the lethal injection began flowing into his veins, Shawn started singing.

His voice rang out in the execution chamber, a modern Christian hymn. Set my spirit free that I might praise thee. Set my spirit free that I might worship thee. Those were his last words. The drugs took effect quickly. Shaun’s eyes closed. His breathing slowed. His body went still. At 12:17 a.m., just 5 minutes after the lethal injection began, Shawn Richard Sers was pronounced dead. He was 29 years old.

 He had been on death row for 13 years and he was the first person executed in the United States in 40 years for a crime committed at age 16. Sean Sers became the 512th person executed nationwide since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Of those 512 executions, only 12 were juveniles at the time of their crimes, and all of them were 17 years old.

 Shawn was the only one who was 16. The last inmate executed for a murder committed at age 16 had been Leonard Shockley, who died in Maryland on April 10th, 1959, exactly 40 years earlier. During the 1990s, the United States executed 10 juvenile offenders. Only four other countries were known to have executed juvenile offenders during that decade.

Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. The United States executed more juvenile offenders than those four countries combined. The international community was horrified. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations, and countless human rights organizations condemned [clears throat] the execution.

 They argued that executing someone for a crime committed at age 16 violated international law and basic human decency. But Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmonson defended the decision. Shaun Sellers’s case is an aberration because Shaun Sellers is an aberration. Edmonson said he committed multiple murders, the first one out of some sort of curiosity.

Edmonson complained that the world media did not appreciate that hundreds of juvenile killers in Oklahoma never faced the death penalty and many of their cases never left juvenile court. When asked whether Shaun’s execution would spark more debate on capital punishment, Edmonson said, “I hope the debate on capital punishment never ends because it is such a serious matter.

 However, that is not our role here tonight. Our role here tonight is to see that the laws of Oklahoma are carried out.” 6 years later on March 1st, 2005, the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in the case of Roer versus Simmons. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional to execute anyone for a crime committed under the age of 18.

 The decision came too late for Sha Sers. If he had been sentenced after 2005, his execution would have been unconstitutional. But in 1999, the law allowed it and Oklahoma carried it out. Shaun Sers remains the last person ever executed in the United States for a crime committed at age 16. The case raises questions that have no easy answers.

 Was Sha Sers a cold-blooded killer who manipulated the system with fake mental illness and a phony Christian conversion? Or was he a severely damaged teenager with brain damage, multiple personality disorder, and untreated mental illness who committed horrific crimes while not in control of his own mind? Did his Christian conversion represent genuine redemption? Or was it a calculated attempt to gain clemency and avoid execution? These are questions that people continue to debate.

 Some believe Shawn was truly redeemed, that he spent 13 years on death row, becoming a better person, ministering to others, and finding peace with God. They point to his exemplary prison record, his work with teenagers, and his books and videos warning others about the dangers of Satanism. They believe executing him denied the possibility that a person like a child of 16 can be rehabilitated and redeemed.

 Others believe Shawn was a manipulator to the very end. They point to the prison officials who said they saw him rehearsing evidence of mental illness. They point to his step siblings who never believed his conversion was sincere. They point to his final words where he didn’t apologize or express remorse, but instead told his victim’s families they would still hate him tomorrow.

 What is clear is that three people are dead because of Sha’s sellers. Robert Paul Bower, a 35-year-old convenience store clerk, was shot in the head because he refused to sell beer to two teenagers. He left behind a family who mourned him. Vonda Bellofato, Shaun’s 32-year-old mother, was shot in the back of the head and then in the face while she slept in her own bed.

 Paulie Bellato Shawn’s 43-year-old stepfather, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, was shot in the back of the head while he slept. They never had a chance to defend themselves. They never saw it coming. and their deaths were the result of a 16-year-old boy’s curiosity about what it feels like to kill someone. Shaun Sers spent his teenage years descending into Satanism, drinking his own blood, performing dark rituals, and listening to voices that told him to murder.

 He poisoned his mother three times with rat poison. And when that didn’t work, he shot her. He staged a crime scene to make it look like an intruder had committed the murders. He showed no remorse after killing Robert Bower. Instead, giggling like it was a prank. These are not the actions of someone who was completely out of touch with reality.

 These are the actions of someone who knew what he was doing and chose to do it anyway. But Shawn also suffered severe abuse as a child. He was beaten. He was humiliated. He was abandoned repeatedly by the people who were supposed to love him. He had brain damage from a childhood head injury that was never treated.

 He heard voices from the age of six. And according to three mental health professionals, he had multiple personality disorder that was not diagnosed until 7 years after his trial. The courts acknowledged all of this evidence. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said Shaun’s illness was such that he might be able to prove his factual innocence, but they couldn’t intervene because of procedural rules.

The state of Oklahoma executed Sha Sers not because there was no evidence of mental illness, but because the evidence came too late. The system had already moved forward and nothing could stop it. On February 4th, 1999, at 12:17 a.m., the state of Oklahoma killed a man who had been a child when he committed his crimes.

 A man with documented brain damage and mental illness. A man who claimed to have been redeemed through Christianity. Whether Shaun Sers was truly redeemed or merely manipulating the system, we will never know for certain. What we do know is that his execution marked a dark moment in American history. It was the first time in 40 years the United States had executed someone for a crime committed at age 16, and it would be the last.

 6 years later, the Supreme Court would declare such executions unconstitutional, recognizing that children, even children who commit terrible crimes, deserve a chance at redemption. For Shaun Sellers, that recognition came too late. The case of Sha Richard Sers is now closed. a descent into Satanism at age 15, three brutal murders, a jailhouse conversion to Christianity, 13 years on death row, and finally on a cold February morning in 1999, a needle in the arm and a song about Jesus.

 Justice, such as it is, was served.