[2] His father, Earl Bradford "Brad" Postelle, had a 1996 drug conviction and, in 1999, was suspected of manufacturing methamphetamine in an old school bus behind his home.
[1] Prior to the attack, Brad Postelle was involved in a motorcycle crash and was seriously injured, receiving a brain injury resulting in seizures.
[1][4] On July 7, detectives tracked a maroon van, similar to one seen in surveillance footage leaving the crime scene, to Terre Haute, Indiana, where it was found.
[6] His father, Brad, was declared incompetent to stand trial due to injuries resulting from the motorcycle accident.
[8] In February 2020, more than two dozen inmates, including Postelle, filed a motion to reopen the 2014 lawsuit, Glossip v. Chandler after the state announced plans to resume executions, claiming the new lethal injection protocol was incomplete.
[9] The lawsuit claims there is autopsy evidence suggesting that the drugs used in lethal injection make people feel as though they are drowning through a "flash pulmonary edema" and like they are being "burned alive".
[11][10] In November 2021, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit rejected the inmates' request to intervene.
[1] At the hearing, Postelle's lawyer, Robert Nance, argued that he had a learning disability with an IQ in the low 70s and told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board "I think he needs a certain amount of forgiveness because he grew up in an environment that was almost exclusively negative.
[1][12][13] Oklahoma Attorney General John M. O'Connor stated that he was grateful the Pardon and Parole Board denied Postelle's request.
[14] In January 2022, Postelle and other death row inmates in Oklahoma asked Judge Friot of the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma to grant them a temporary injunction that would halt their executions until a trial could be held over the constitutionality of the three-drug lethal injection method.
[5] At the time of the request for an injunction, Postelle and Donald Grant, another death row inmate, offered to be executed by firing squad instead of lethal injection.