Anthony Sanchez executed for 1996 killing of a University of Oklahoma dance student

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The man convicted of raping and murdering a University of Oklahoma dance student in 1996 was executed Thursday morning.

Anthony Sanchez, 44, was pronounced dead at 10:19 a.m. CDT at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester following a three-drug injection. Earlier this year he rejected his chance for a clemency hearing. 

"I’m innocent," Sanchez said as he was strapped to a gurney inside the death chamber. "I didn’t kill nobody."

The case for the murder of 21-year-old Juli Busken, an Arkansas native who had just completed her last semester when she was abducted from the parking lot of her Norman apartment complex on Dec. 20, 1996, went unsolved for years until DNA from the crime scene matched Sanchez, who was serving time for burglary.

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Sanchez’s attorney, Eric Allen of Columbus, Ohio, requested a stay of execution in federal court, claiming he needed more time to go through boxes of evidence in the case. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the request Thursday.

Busken's body was found bound, raped and shot in the head near a lake in southeast Oklahoma City. 

She had performed as a ballerina in several dance performances during her tenure at OU and was memorialized at the campus with a dance scholarship in her name at the College of Fine Arts.

Sanchez was convicted and sentenced to die in 2006, after DNA from sperm on Busken's clothing at the crime scene was matched to him.

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Anthony Castillo Sanchez, the man charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, sodomy and