[3] His case drew worldwide attention due to his age as well as his jailhouse conversion to Christianity and his claim that demonic possession made him innocent of his crimes.
On March 5, 1986, Sellers killed his mother and stepfather, Vonda and Lee Bellofatto, while they were asleep in the bedroom of their Oklahoma City home.
[4] Sellers also later confessed to the 1985 killing of Robert Paul Bower, a thirty-two-year-old Circle K convenience store clerk who had refused to sell him beer.
His friends started a website on his behalf, and he campaigned for clemency based on his religious conversion, age, and involvement in Satanism.
The appellate court ruled that there was "uncontroverted evidence" of Sellers' religious conversion and that he may indeed suffer from multiple personality disorder.
Human Rights Watch condemned this decision to "[uphold] the sentence on narrow procedural grounds" despite the "acknowledged 'uncontested clinical evidence' that Sellers suffers from multiple personality disorder", adding in its letter to Governor Keating that "No civilized society can accept the execution of a person who was a child at the time he committed his crimes and who was – and remains – afflicted with a mental disorder.
"[16] In its 1999 letter HR Watch observed also that since 1990, the only other countries known to have executed juvenile offenders besides the United States of America were Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.
The first appeal, made in federal district court, accused the state Pardon and Parole Board of violating his civil rights.
[20][21] Sellers' imminent execution brought condemnation from a wide variety of sources, including the European Union, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the American Bar Association, and Bianca Jagger.
Nearly all raised issues about his age at the time of the crimes, and many argued that his religious work from prison outweighed the state's need to execute him.
[22] He began his final statement by addressing his step-siblings: 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.
"[11] Sellers's stepsiblings objected to the substance of his final remarks, that instead of apologizing or mentioning their mother, he only "...addressed the fact that we would still feel the same.
[11][14] The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roper v. Simmons, 542 U.S. 551 (2005) later decided it was unconstitutional to execute an individual for a crime committed under the age of 18.
An Oklahoma grand jury investigated whether Sellers or his friends received profits from the sale of the book, but no indictment was forthcoming.