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| Clayton Lockett |
Clayton Lockett, the death-row inmate who was the subject of a botched execution by the state of Oklahoma, was Tasered by prison staff and had cut his own arm on the day of the failed procedure, according to a timeline released by the state's corrections chief on Thursday.
The document released by the director of the corrections department, Robert Patton, shows that medical staff could not find a suitable vein on any of his limbs in which to inject the lethal drugs intended to kill him, and had to use his groin instead. Lockett died, apparently from a heart attack, 43 minutes after his attempted execution began and 10 minutes after it had been called off.
Patton recommended an indefinite stay of executions in Oklahoma until procedures for judicial killings in the state are completely rewritten and staff retrained. The execution of another inmate, Charles Warner, also due to have been carried out on Tuesday, has already been postponed.
“It will take several days or possibly weeks to refine the new protocols,” Patton wrote in a letter to the Republican governor of Oklahoma, Mary Fallin. “Once written, staff will require extensive training and understanding of new protocols before an execution can be scheduled. I recommend asking the court of criminal appeals to issue an indefinite stay of execution.” Patton said he supported an “external investigation” of Lockett's death.
Fallin said on Thursday that she had the authority to grant a 60-day moratorium before the attorney general would petition the appeals court for an extension. “We need to take as long as possible to get the answer right,” she told reporters.
Alex Weintz, a spokesman for Fallin, 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 timeline published by Oklahoma details a chaotic scene in the death chamber before and during the failed execution, as staff struggle to place an intravenous line into Lockett, report that he was unconscious, but then did not spot that the IV connection had failed because they had covered Lockett groin with a sheet, to prevent that area of his body from being seen by witnesses.
The document is notable as much for what it leaves out as for what it reveals: there is no mention of the three minutes in which witnesses saw Lockett thrashing violently on the gurney and attempting to speak, despite having been declared unconscious. Neither does it say anything about what happened in the ten minutes between the procedure being called off and the moment Lockett died.
Source: The Guardian, May 2, 2014 (local time)
Oklahoma Official Calls for Outside Review of Botched Execution
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Official timeline of the events leading to the execution of offender Clayton Lockett, excerpted from the document released by the director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Robert Patton. In a four-page document to the attention of Oklahoma Governor Fallin, Mr. Patton recommends "a complete review/revision of the execution protocol", "an indefinite stay of execution", "an [external] investigation of the circumstances surrounding the execution." (1/3) Click to enlarge |
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| Official timeline of the execution (2/3) |
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| Official timeline of the execution (3/3) |
On the morning of his execution, the Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett slashed his right arm and refused to be restrained to leave his cell. Prison officials shocked him with a Taser to get him to move.
The new details about the events leading up to the botched execution of Mr. Lockett on Tuesday night were released Thursday by the director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Robert Patton. In a letter to the governor of Oklahoma, Mary Fallin, the department offered the extraordinarily detailed sequence of the events leading up the execution and also called for an independent outside review of what went wrong at Mr. Lockett’s execution and for an indefinite stay of a second execution that had been scheduled on the same night.
During the failed execution on Tuesday night, Mr. Lockett writhed and groaned on the gurney after a large dose of sedatives had apparently not been fully delivered. The execution was halted and Mr. Lockett died, apparently of a heart attack, about 10 minutes later. After a call to Governor Fallin and the attorney general, Mr. Patton halted the execution of a second man, Charles Warner.
Mr. Patton said in the letter that after medical personnel examined Mr. Lockett’s arms, legs and feet, they placed an intravenous line at his groin because suitable veins could not be found elsewhere. That vein collapsed during the execution, the document said, and Mr. Lockett did not have another vein that was suitable. Nor were more drugs available. “The drugs had either absorbed into tissue, leaked out or both,” Mr. Patton wrote.
The Corrections Department’s timeline of Mr. Lockett’s last day begins at 5:06 a.m. when the inmate “refused orders to be restrained” to be taken for X-rays as part of the execution protocol. The prison team entering his cell shocked him with a Taser after his refusal.
The inmate was taken to the prison’s medical unit, “where it was found he had a self-inflicted laceration to his right arm,” the timeline states. “Treatment was administered.”
Mr. Lockett was taken to the prison’s health care center where it was determined that no stitches were needed for the self-inflicted injuries to his right arm. He was then returned to an observation room to wait for his lethal injection later that day.
About 5:50 p.m., a phlebotomist found no viable point of entry on his arms for the lethal injection and decided to insert the needle into his groin area. “The insertion point was covered with a sheet to prevent witness viewing of the groin area,” the timeline said.
The execution began at 6:23 p.m. The first drug, midazolam, a sedative, was administered.
At 6:33 p.m., the doctor checked Mr. Lockett and determined he was unconscious, the document said. The next two drugs, vecuronium bromide, which stops breathing, and potassium bromide, which stops the heart, were the administered.
Less than 10 minutes later, at 6:42 p.m., the timeline said, the shades were lowered and the phlebotomist and a doctor checked the IV.
Then the timeline offers this sequence of what happened in the execution chamber:
“The doctor checked the IV and reported the blood vein had collapsed, and the drugs had either absorbed into tissue, leaked out or both,” the report states.
The warden, Anita Trammell, then contacted Mr. Patton, who asked: “Have enough drugs been administered to cause death?'”
No, the doctor responded.
Mr. Patton then asked whether there was another vein available and “if so, are there enough drugs remaining?”
No, the doctor responded.
“The director requested clarification as to whether enough drugs had been administered to cause death. The doctor responded,'No.’ ” The doctor then checked the inmate and “found a faint heartbeat.”
At 6:56 p.m., Mr. Patton called off the execution after consulting the governor.
Mr. Lockett died on the gurney of a heart attack at 7:06 p.m., the timeline states.
In his letter, Mr. Patton said the state should allow an external review of what went wrong at Lockett’s execution and should conduct a full review of execution procedures.
He also said that the other inmate, Mr. Warner, should be given an indefinite stay rather than the two-week reprieve that Governor Fallin gave him after the botched execution. Once new protocols are written, Mr. Patton said, “staff will require extensive training.”
“We look forward to a thorough review and a rewrite of the protocols for the State of Oklahoma in carrying out executions,” Mr. Patton said after the letter was released. “I do not know how long that investigation will take. There is no timeline for the review, nor is there a timeline for the rewrite of the protocols. There is an active warrant in two weeks for an execution. I do not know if that will be completed by that time.”
Source: The New York Times, MARK S. GETZFRED, May 1, 2014
Botched Oklahoma Execution Could Renew Constitutional Challenges To Death Penalty
Convicted killer Clayton Lockett, 38, began writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow Tuesday evening after he had supposedly been rendered unconscious by the first of three drugs in the state's new lethal injection combination.
The execution was halted, and Lockett died of an apparent heart attack 10 minutes later, authorities said.
While officials later blamed a collapsed vein — not the drugs themselves — the case is raising questions about the ability of states to administer lethal injections that meet the Eighth Amendment requirement that punishments be neither cruel nor unusual.
Death penalty opponents such as the American Civil Liberties Union called for a moratorium on capital punishment. And the White House said the procedure fell short of humane standards.
In light of other apparently bungled executions around the U.S. in recent years, Jen Moreno, staff attorney at the Berkeley School of Law Death Penalty Clinic, said the risks are clear.
"To say that they're isolated incidents is mischaracterizing them, and what they really are is foreseeable consequences of using an inherently dangerous procedure," she said.
Thirty-two states have the death penalty, and all of them rely at least in part on lethal injection. The federal government also uses lethal injection.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection in 2008 in a case out of Kentucky. As part of that decision, the high court said there is no constitutional right to a painless execution.
The "Constitution does not demand the avoidance of all risk of pain in carrying out executions," Chief Justice John Roberts said.
That decision involved a three-drug method that many states no longer use because certain drugs have been cut off by European suppliers.
More recently, attorneys making the cruel-and-unusual argument have targeted the newer drug combinations adopted around the country, their reliability and their suppliers, but they have had little success.
Making that argument has always been difficult.
The Supreme Court has never declared a method of execution unconstitutional on the grounds that it is cruel and unusual. Over the past 135 years, it upheld the firing squad (1879), the electric chair (1890), and then lethal injection.
The court made it clear over the years that the Eighth Amendment prohibits inflicting pain merely to torture or punish an inmate, drawing a distinction between a method like electrocution and old European practices such as drawing and quartering. The Constitution prohibits "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain," the court said in 1976.
It has also held that "an isolated mishap" during an execution does not violate the Eighth Amendment, "because such an event, while regrettable, does not suggest cruelty or a 'substantial risk of serious harm,'" according to a 1947 decision allowing Louisiana to return an inmate to the electric chair after a botched attempt a year earlier.
That suggests that an isolated episode — say, one bungled execution in Oklahoma — might not be enough to bring the issue before the Supreme Court.
Source: Huffington Post, May 1, 2014