 |
Oklahoma State Penitentiary
|
In McAlester, Checotah and other towns in the verdant, rolling landscape of eastern Oklahoma, there is some discomfort about how the execution played out, and many agree that changes should be made to the system. But there is little argument about the final outcome for Lockett.
“I think he got what’s coming to him,” said James Barr, who was buying a coffee at the Harbor Mountain Coffee House in McAlester, about two miles from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, the site of the botched execution.
Lockett was convicted of
murder and other charges, including rape, in 2000 after he and two accomplices attacked two young women, one of whom — Neiman — Lockett shot twice. Lockett then ordered his accomplices to
bury her alive, witnesses said.
Capital punishment is broadly popular in Oklahoma, where voters chose Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by a 2 to 1 margin over Obama in 2012 and where Gov. Mary Fallin and other Republicans dominate state government.
Ron Grubis, a retired high school principal, says he believes that it was a medical accident and thinks that an ongoing legislative controversy in Oklahoma over where the execution drugs are obtained is unwarranted. But he doesn’t understand why and how an execution should go bad.
“Why is it so hard to kill anybody with drugs? Shouldn’t it be simple?” Grubis asked.
Grubis, a staunch supporter of capital punishment, said he believes that death row inmates should be able to choose how they die. “We can go back to giving people a choice,” he said. “Let’s go back to the firing squad. There’s no such thing as a totally painless execution.”
In McAlester, a town of about 18,000 some 90 miles south of Tulsa, executions have become a routine occurrence at the hulking white penitentiary and its outbuildings, all surrounded by a high fence and barbed wire on the edge of town.
Source: The Washington Post, Katie Zezima, May 3, 2014
