 |
| Charles Warner |
Warner was set to be executed by lethal injection on April 29. His execution was delayed 2 weeks by Gov. Mary Fallin.
Convicted killer Charles Warner is now set to be executed Nov. 13, according to a filing Thursday with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.
Warner was set to be executed by lethal injection on April 29. His execution was delayed 2 weeks by Gov. Mary Fallin following the botched execution that day of murderer Clayton Lockett.
The state Attorney General's Office says it will not oppose a 180-day stay in Warner's case, in order to allow for an investigation into Lockett's execution to be completed.
Source: The Oklahoman, May 8, 2014
Oklahoma agrees to 180-day stay of execution for death-row inmate
 |
| Oklahoma Death Chamber |
The Oklahoma attorney general's office on Thursday agreed to a 180-day stay of execution for death-row inmate Charles Warner, while the state investigates last week's botched execution of Clayton Lockett.
Lawyers for Warner, a convicted killer, had requested the state court of criminal appeals grant a stay of execution for at least 6 months. The attorney general's office said on Thursday he should be executed on 13 November.
The criminal appeals court had ordered the state to respond to the stay request by noon on Thursday. The response was filed at 11.45am.
After an unprecedented legal and political battle,
Oklahoma tried to execute Lockett on 29 April with an untried dose of the drug midazolam followed by vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Lockett did not fall asleep for 10 minutes; 3 minutes after he fell unconscious he began to writhe and struggle against his restraints.
16 minutes into the execution, he groaned: "Man." The warden ordered that blinds be lowered to the execution witnesses.
Officials called off the execution, but corrections director Robert Patton said Lockett died of what appeared to be a heart attack 43 minutes after the execution began.
Warner's execution, also scheduled to take place that night, was rescheduled to 13 May.
Lockett was convicted of kidnapping and shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman as part of a 1999 home invasion. She survived the initial assault, but Lockett ordered an accomplice to bury her alive. He also raped one of her friends. Neiman's parents supported his death sentence.
Warner was convicted of raping and killing 11-month-old Adrianna Waller in 1997. The child's mother said she morally opposes the death penalty and would be traumatized again by knowing of Warner's execution.
After Lockett's death, Patton recommended an indefinite stay of all executions in the state. He said refining new protocols could take weeks and prison staff would need "extensive training."
The state department of public safety is reviewing Lockett's death. One autopsy was completed in Texas, at the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science, and Lockett's body was sent back to the medical examiner's office in Tulsa this week. The state's autopsy report is pending. His attorneys will have a private doctor conduct their own autopsy.
The office of Mary Fallin, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, has said the state "will not proceed with any executions until department of corrections protocols can be reviewed and updated, and staff then trained to implement those new protocols".
The state said it would notify the court of any need for an additional stay in Warner's case as the review of Lockett's death continued.
"Warner's litigation conduct over the past 60 days demonstrates a strategic choice by his counsel to pursue an endless media campaign against capital punishment in Oklahoma instead of exhausting available legal remedies in the proper court," wrote Seth Branham, an assistant attorney general.
"His request for indefinite stay is merely an extension of that strategy."
Madeline Cohen, an attorney for Warner, welcomed the stay.
"It's good that they recognize they are not in a position to carry out a constitutional execution," she said. "There are some unnecessary, inflammatory and inaccurate statements in the response."
A Democratic member of the state house of representatives, Joe Dorman, who is running against Governor Fallin, plans to hold a press conference at the state capitol on Thursday, to call for an outside investigation of Lockett's death.
Oklahoma senator Constance Johnson and representative Seneca Scott have called for a moratorium on executions in the state until an independent outside body, not a state agency, fully investigates Lockett's death. Their resolutions were unlikely to be heard in the legislature.
On Monday, the US supreme court declined to hear the appeal of another Oklahoma death-row inmate, Richard Glossip, whose execution date has not been set. The Oklahoma attorney general's office has asked the criminal appeals court to set a date but also to consider the governor and attorney general's statements that no executions should be carried out until the completion of the state's review of Lockett's death.
Source: The Guardian, May 8, 2014
