MCALESTER, Okla.  — A 50-year-old Oklahoma death row inmate was executed a day after Gov. Kevin Stitt rejected a clemency recommendation.

The Associated Press reported that James Coddington was executed by lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 10:16 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

The news outlet reported that Coddington, then 24, was convicted of the 1997 murder of 73-year-old Albert Hale, who he beat to death with a hammer.

During his trial, the news outlet reported, Coddington killed Hale because he didn't give him money to buy cocaine.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that during his clemency hearing, Coddington apologized to the Hale family, telling the five-member Pardon and Parole Board that he was a changed man.

“I’m clean, I know God, I’m not ... I’m not a vicious murderer,” Coddington said, the AP reported. “If this ends today with my death sentence, OK.”

The five-member board voted 3-2 to recommend Coddington for clemency, the Associated Press reported.

However, on Wednesday, Stitt declined his clemency recommendation that would have changed his sentence to life in prison without parole, The Oklahoman reported.

Scientists believe they've developed a way to treat skin cancer more efficiently and without surgery.

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine developed an injection of nanoparticles and a chemotherapy agent that goes directly into the cancerous cells.

Dr. Michael Girardi says the breakthrough would allow doctors to treat multiple skin cancers at once.

An injection treatment could benefit health care systems and lower costs for patients.

Girardi says one of the most important parts in this possible treatment is how it targets the skin cancer.

“We load the anti-cancer agent within and that will slowly release over time. It keeps a lot of the anti-cancer drug right there within the skin cancer, so it can work long after the injection,” said Girardi.

Work on the treatment started more than three years ago. Researchers wanted to develop a method that concentrated on its intended target, but is also compatible with treatments that stimulate the immune system.

So far, they say the nanoparticles combined with the chemotherapy agent have been successful in clinical models.

“We have a special coating on these particles that allows it to be very sticky. So, when we put it into the tumor, it binds to proteins that lets it stay within the tumor matrix, which is a complex of proteins around the cancer,” said Girardi.

Girardi says the hope is each skin cancer would need just one injection, but it could take more than one depending on the severity and the patient. That is something that will be determined in human trials.

human trials are still a few years away, because they need to secure funding and partnerships.

ATMORE, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama inmate has won a reprieve from a scheduled lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court said the state could not proceed without his pastor in the death chamber.

Thursday's planned execution of Willie B. Smith III was called off late at night when the U.S. Supreme Court maintained an injunction.

The state prison system said afterward that the execution would not proceed in light of the ruling.

Alabama has maintained that non-prison staff should not be in the room for security reasons.

The 51-year-old Smith was sentenced to death for the 1991 murder of 22-year-old Sharma Ruth Johnson in Birmingham, Alabama's largest city.