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| Mary Fallin |
An
execution this week that went terribly wrong has catapulted Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, to the national stage. But there's more to Fallin than her zeal for capital punishment. The first female governor of Oklahoma has also quashed broader criminal justice reform, refused Medicaid expansion that would cover 150,000 Oklahoma residents, signed 10 new restrictions on abortion and contraception, blocked local minimum wage increases, and slashed education funding.
Before she was anointed a "Mama Grizzly" by former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin in 2010, Fallin served 2 terms in the Oklahoma House, 3 as lieutenant governor, and 2 in the U.S. House of Representatives. Her mother and father both served as (Democratic) mayors of Tecumseh, where Fallin was raised.
Fallin, now head of the National Governors' Association, is up for re-election this fall and is expected to sail to victory. Last year, she denied having national aspirations: "Maybe someday we'll have a woman president," she said. "Not me, though." If she did end up on a national ticket, Fallin would likely tout what she sees as an exemplary record. "We can teach Washington a lesson or 2 about what it takes to be a successful state and a model government," she said once. Here is what that means in practice.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Oklahoma has the highest number of executions per capita in the country. Fallin laid the groundwork for this week's debacle in 2011 by signing into legislation that enabled Oklahoma to experiment with the drugs used in lethal injection and to keep the details secret.
In April, when the State Supreme Court issued a temporary stay on the execution of Clayton Lockett, citing concerns about the constitutionality of that law, Fallin decided to ignore it. The Supreme Court's "attempted stay of execution is outside the constitutional authority of that body," she declared. "I cannot give effect to the order by that honorable court." (The Court eventually reached a different conclusion on its own, it said.)
"You have a political figure who unnecessarily rushed forward an execution, under the veil of secrecy, that led to the torture of an individual at the hands of the state of Oklahoma," Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the Oklahoma ACLU, told msnbc. The ACLU is calling for an independent investigation into Lockett's execution. An investigation ordered by Fallin will be under her control.
Source: MSNBC, May 2, 2014
