OKLAHOMA CITY — A 71-year-old Cuban immigrant who executed his girlfriend with two shots to her eyes, one fired minutes after the other, is set to die by lethal injection next month after telling a parole board he does not want their mercy. Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez, who has spent 23 years on death row for the 2003 murder of Olympia Cardena Fisher, is scheduled to be executed on August 13, 2026, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. The case has drawn renewed attention not only for the brutality of the crime, which unfolded in front of Fisher’s adult daughter, but for Cuesta-Rodriguez’s extraordinary refusal to ask for clemency.
During a July 22 hearing before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, Cuesta-Rodriguez addressed Fisher’s family through an interpreter, apologizing for the murder. But he did not plead for his life. “My time has come,” he told the board, his voice flat through the translation.
“I want to go peacefully.” The board voted 3-1 to deny clemency, clearing the way for his execution by lethal injection. The moment marked a rare instance where a condemned inmate, facing the final judgment of the state, effectively argued against his own survival.
His attorneys had built a case around his claimed brain damage and untreated psychosis, but Cuesta-Rodriguez himself undercut that narrative with his own words.
The crime that landed Cuesta-Rodriguez on death row was defined by its calculated horror. On May 31, 2003, after becoming convinced that Fisher, 47, was having an 𝒶𝒻𝒻𝒶𝒾𝓇, Cuesta-Rodriguez drank nearly an entire bottle of tequila and left a note on the counter reading, “Fuck you and putas. Goodbye.”
When Fisher and her daughter, Katia Chacon, returned home that night, Cuesta-Rodriguez shot Fisher through one eye. Then, minutes later, as she lay wounded, he shot her through the other eye. The gap between the two shots became the central fact of the prosecution’s case, evidence not of a struggle but of a deliberate execution.
Chacon witnessed the entire attack. She testified that after the first shot, her mother was still alive, still breathing, still capable of suffering. The second shot came after a pause that prosecutors argued was long enough for Cuesta-Rodriguez to make a conscious choice.
“He shot her once, waited, then shot her again,” Assistant Attorney General Chris Howard told the parole board. “This was not an accident. This was a killing designed to inflict maximum pain.”
Cuesta-Rodriguez initially claimed the first shot was accidental, fired when Fisher tried to grab the gun during a struggle. He offered no explanation for the second.
The violence did not come without warning. Eleven days earlier, on May 20, 2003, Fisher had walked into a police station to report domestic 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮. Officers documented bruising on her right upper arm and abdomen.
They prepared to photograph her injuries and file charges. But Fisher, fearing the consequences for Cuesta-Rodriguez, left the station before the process could be completed. The report was filed, but no arrest was made.
That documented 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 became a key piece of evidence at trial, used by prosecutors to establish a pattern of control and violence. The defense objected, arguing it introduced prior bad acts, but the judge allowed it.
At trial, the jury rejected Cuesta-Rodriguez’s accident defense and convicted him of first-degree murder. During the sentencing phase, they found two aggravating factors: that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, and that Cuesta-Rodriguez posed a continuing threat to society. Either factor alone was sufficient under Oklahoma law to impose a death sentence.
The jury chose death. Cuesta-Rodriguez appealed, raising 21 claims of error, including the admission of the domestic 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 testimony. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals rejected every claim.
Federal appeals followed, consuming years, but all ultimately failed.
By the time his execution date was set, Cuesta-Rodriguez had spent nearly two decades on death row. He was 48 when he committed the murder; he turns 72 in September, a month after his scheduled execution. His attorneys, in their clemency bid, argued that his original trial team had failed to fully investigate his mental state.
They presented evidence of what they described as profound brain damage and long-standing psychosis, conditions they said stemmed from a difficult childhood in Cuba. They also called witnesses who knew him in prison, including a close friend, Carolina Rubio-MacWright, who testified that he had changed.
“We were never asking for freedom,” Rubio-MacWright told the board. “But for understanding. He is not the same man who walked into that house 23 years ago.”
She described Cuesta-Rodriguez as a stabilizing influence on other inmates, a man who had found faith and remorse. The state’s response was blistering. Attorney General Gentner Drummond told the board that Fisher’s final moments were “hell” and that any framing of Cuesta-Rodriguez as a reformed man was an insult to her memory.
“He didn’t lose Olympia,” Drummond said. “He took her. He’s not a widower, he’s a murderer.”
Fisher’s daughters also spoke, their testimony carrying the weight of two decades of grief. Cynthia Chacon told the board it had been 23 years since “the word mom was ripped from our vocabulary.” Her sister, Claudia Wallace, described a loss that still shapes their family’s daily life.
“He took a great person who didn’t deserve to die,” Wallace said. When Cuesta-Rodriguez addressed them directly, apologizing and describing himself as “broken” and “filled with remorse,” Wallace was unmoved. “I believe it’s a facade,” she said.
“I know him. I lived with him.”
Cuesta-Rodriguez’s refusal to seek clemency stunned even seasoned observers. “It is almost unheard-of for a death row inmate to tell a parole board they don’t want to be saved,” said legal analyst Maria Santos, a former prosecutor who has followed Oklahoma capital cases for decades. “Most inmates are fighting tooth and nail.
He essentially handed the state what it wanted.” His decision has raised questions about whether he found a form of accountability or simply exhausted the last thing he could control: his own death.
The execution protocol at Oklahoma State Penitentiary is routine but tightly scripted. In the 12 hours before, access to the facility narrows to approved staff and a defined list of witnesses. The evening before, he will be offered a last meal, typically served between 5:00 and 7:00 p.
m. Other Oklahoma inmates in recent years have requested comfort food from childhood or simple fast food like fried chicken or a Big Mac. These are small, human choices made in an otherwise entirely institutional process.
On execution day, he is permitted up to two hours of in-person visitation with his attorney.
That visit must end at least two hours before the scheduled execution time. Corrections officials are required to photograph and formally document every lethal injection 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 used, recording its name, lot number, and expiration date. This level of paperwork exists directly because of what went wrong in 2014 and 2015, when Oklahoma carried out flawed executions that drew national scrutiny.
Cuesta-Rodriguez is permitted to request up to five personal witnesses and two clergy members. Media witnesses are capped at five. Under Oklahoma law, any surviving victims, in this case, Fisher’s family, have the right to witness the execution themselves.
They may also bring one support person. At the appointed hour, Cuesta-Rodriguez will be strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber and given roughly two minutes to speak before the lethal injection process begins. This will be his final chance to say whatever he decides needs to be said to whoever is standing on the other side of the glass.
Then, barring a last-minute stay from the courts or an intervention from Governor Kevin Stitt, the state of Oklahoma will carry out the sentence a jury handed down nearly two decades ago.
Cuesta-Rodriguez has now spent nearly as many years on death row as Olympia Fisher spent alive beside him. At 71, he has told the state he is ready to die. His execution date, August 13, 2026, is set.
The same peace he denied her in her final moments, he says he now seeks for himself. The state says the sentence stands for good reason. In a matter of weeks, unless something changes, it will be carried out at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.
The case has reignited debate in Oklahoma, a state that has executed more prisoners per capita than any other in the nation since the reinstatement of the death penalty. For years, the state’s execution protocol was under a de facto moratorium following bungled lethal injections that left inmates writhing or taking far longer than expected to die. The first of those failures came in 2014, when Clayton Lockett suffered a heart attack 43 minutes after the execution began, with witnesses reporting he was still alive for much of that time.
A second, in 2015, was called off after the wrong 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 was delivered.
Oklahoma resumed executions in 2021 and has since carried out more than a dozen. The state has defended its current protocol, which uses a single dose of midazolam, a sedative, followed by vecuronium bromide, a paralytic, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Critics argue the combination risks causing extreme pain if the inmate is not fully sedated.
Cuesta-Rodriguez’s case has not drawn the same level of scrutiny as others, in part because he has not fought the sentence. But his final months have been marked by a quietness that unsettles some observers.
“He is not asking for anything,” said Santos. “That is its own kind of tragedy. He has accepted the judgment of the state.
He is not trying to rewrite the record. He is just waiting.” His attorneys have not publicly explained why he chose not to fight for clemency.
They have said only that they respect their client’s wishes and that they have done their duty to present his case. The parole board’s decision, though unsurprising given the facts, carried its own weight. The single dissenting vote came from a board member who expressed concern about Cuesta-Rodriguez’s claimed mental deficits.
That concern was not enough. The majority found the crime itself outweighed any mitigating factors. In their statement, they noted that Cuesta-Rodriguez had admitted to the shooting and had not shown the kind of remorse that might warrant mercy.
His apology to the family, they said, did not undo the evidence of intent. “The murder was cold, calculated, and cruel,” the board wrote. “The record supports the jury’s finding that the defendant is a continuing threat to society.
Clemency is not appropriate.”
For Fisher’s family, the execution will close a chapter that began with a single phone call on a spring night in 2003. Cynthia Chacon was 22 years old when she walked into that house and saw her mother shot. She is now 45, with children of her own.
“We have waited 23 years for this,” she said in an interview after the clemency hearing. “It does not bring her back. Nothing does.
But it means he cannot hurt anyone else.” Her sister, Claudia Wallace, said she plans to be in the witness room when the execution is carried out. “I need to see it,” she said.
“I need to know it is real.”
The execution, if carried out, will be the 12th in Oklahoma since the resumption of lethal injections. The state has 32 other inmates on death row. The scheduling of Cuesta-Rodriguez’s date came after years of legal delays, many of which were the result of challenges to Oklahoma’s execution protocol.
Those challenges have largely been resolved, clearing the way for a steady pace of executions. Governor Stitt, a Republican who has overseen several executions since taking office in 2019, has not indicated whether he will intervene.
Under Oklahoma law, the governor can grant clemency only on the recommendation of the parole board. Because the board voted to deny clemency, Stitt’s authority is limited. He could issue a temporary reprieve, but one of 60 days, requiring the board to reconvene.
He has done so in only one case since taking office, in 2021, when he commuted the sentence of Julius Jones to life without parole after intense public pressure. No similar campaign has emerged for Cuesta-Rodriguez. The question now is whether he will die as he has said he wants: peacefully, at the hands of the state.
His final moments will be recorded, as required by protocol. Witnesses, both personal and media, will watch through a window as the drugs are administered. Cuesta-Rodriguez will be asked if he has any last words.
He may speak, or he may remain silent. Then the sedative will flow, followed by the paralytic, followed by the 𝒹𝓇𝓊𝑔 that stops the heart. The process typically takes 15 to 20 minutes.
Afterward, a doctor will pronounce death. The body will be taken to a funeral home chosen by the inmate. The state will issue a certificate of death.
For those who knew Fisher, the date of August 13, 2026, has been marked on calendars for months. It is a Tuesday. It will be 23 years, 2 months, and 13 days since she died.
The gap between the two shots that killed her has become a metaphor in the courtroom and in the public imagination, a symbol of choice, of cruelty, of the space between one decision and the next. In that gap, prosecutors argued, Cuesta-Rodriguez had time to think, time to stop, time to choose mercy. He did not.
And now, the state offers him none in return.