 |
| Oklahoma Death Chamber |
Tonight Oklahoma will continue the nation's ongoing experiment in executing people with untested drug combinations as it moves forward to kill death row inmates Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner using a new, secretly acquired drug cocktail.
Officials in Oklahoma and other states have resorted to these methods because they can no longer access sodium thiopental, the anesthetic traditionally used in lethal injections, and another drug used to paralyze the condemned. The lone US manufacturer quit producing sodium thiopental in 2011, and international suppliers - particularly in the European Union, which opposes the death penalty on humanitarian grounds - have stopped exporting both drugs to the United States. This has left states like Oklahoma scrambling to find new pharmaceuticals for killing death-row inmates. Some have been reduced to illegally importing the drugs, using untested combinations, or buying from unregulated compounding pharmacies, some of which have a history of producing contaminated products.
Death row inmates and their lawyers have protested on the grounds that these untested protocols could produce a level of suffering that violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, and they've sued for more information about the source and purity of the drugs. In response, several states have passed secrecy laws, allowing them to keep the names of their suppliers, and in some cases the contents of the lethal injection, under wraps. (Oklahoma is so eager to hide the source of its death drugs that it buys them with petty cash so there are no transaction records.) Death row inmates, in turn, have filed suits challenging the constitutionality of these secrecy statutes.
In February, Lockett and Warner prompted a high-profile showdown between Oklahoma officials when they sued the state asserting that its execution protocol could inflict "severe pain" in violation of the Eighth Amendment. A lower state court found the drug secrecy law patently unconstitutional, and the state Supreme Court ultimately stayed the 2 men's executions until the issues were fully litigated. But Republican Gov. Mary Fallin insisted they be executed regardless of the court's ruling, prompting a political crisis. On April 23, the Oklahoma Supreme Court, whose justices are now being threatened by the legislature with impeachment, caved and allowed the executions to move forward.
The public knows very little about the drugs that will be used to kill Lockett and Warner who stand convicted of murder. Lockett shot a teenage girl, then buried her alive, while Warner raped and killed his girlfriend's 11-month-old daughter in 1997. Initially, the state said it would deploy a 3-drug cocktail, including the sedative pentobarbital (normally used to euthanize animals); vercuronium bromide, which paralyzes the inmate; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. The 1st drug is supposed to knock out the inmate so he doesn't feel pain. The 2nd drug paralyzes him so onlookers can't tell if he's suffering. But pentobarbital, which states substituted for sodium thiopental after it went off the market, works more slowly than the old drug, and wasn't tested in advance to make sure it was an appropriate substitute. Also, lawyers argue that it doesn't prevent pain during an execution. For that reason, injecting it into a conscious animal in California is actually a crime.
Due to a shortages of pentobarbital and vercuronium bromide, Oklahoma planned to buy the drugs from an unnamed compounding pharmacy. This was problematic because such pharmacies are unregulated, and contaminated pentobarbital can result in excruciatingly painful deaths. (Experts say it can feel as though the insides of a person's veins are being scraped with sandpaper.) South Dakota used a compounded pentobarbital contaminated with a fungus to execute Eric Robert in 2012. During the execution, he repeatedly opened his eyes - a sign that the drug wasn't working, some experts said. Oklahoma has had similar problems. In January, it executed another man, Michael Lee Wilson, using pentobarbital from an unidentified compounding pharmacy. During the execution he sputtered, "I feel my whole body burning," another sign that the drug wasn't doing its job.
In March, Oklahoma backed away from this approach and said it would instead use 1 of 5 possible drug combinations, including a 2-drug cocktail of midazolam (a sedative) and hydromorphone (a pain killer). When states first proposed using those drugs in lethal injection mixes last year, defense lawyers and medical experts warned that inmates receiving them would essentially suffocate to death. Brushing aside these concerns, in January Ohio used the drugs to execute Dennis McGuire, who gasped and convulsed horribly for more than 10 minutes before taking a record 26 minutes to die. His family, who watched in horror, is now suing over what they allege was cruel and unusual punishment.
Oklahoma has since shifted course again and announced that it would use a 3-drug combo that includes midazolam and pancuronium bromide. According to Madeline Cohen, an assistant federal public defender representing Charles Warner, the state claims that both drugs are being purchased from manufacturers rather than compounding pharmacies but wouldn't provide any other information. The only known use of this drug combination for executions was in Florida in 2013, but Florida used 5 times the dose of midazolam that Oklahoma plans to use, meaning Lockett and Warner will essentially be human guinea pigs. "It is an experiment, and I don't think anybody is absolutely certain what will happen in Oklahoma," says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Dieter adds that we'll never know whether the drugs worked properly or caused needlessly painful deaths because the people who could tell us will be dead.
Source: Mother Jones, April 29, 2014
Oklahoma's 1st double-execution since 1937 set for Tuesday night
Executions are planned for 6 and 8 p.m. at the State Penitentiary in McAlester. Inmates Clayton Derrell Lockett and Charles Frederick Warner are set to be executed.
For the 1st time since 1937, the state is expected to put 2 men to death on the same day when it executes Clayton Derrell Lockett and Charles Frederick Warner on Tuesday evening.
Lockett's execution is scheduled for 6 p.m.; Warner's is set for 8 p.m.
Lockett, 38, was sentenced to death for the 1999 murder of Stephanie Neiman, 19, in Perry. Warner, 46, is set to be executed for the 1997 murder of his live in girlfriend's 11-month-old daughter, Adriana Waller.
The 2 death penalty cases have been subject to much legal wrangling and court action in the past several weeks.
Lockett was scheduled to be executed April 22, but his execution, along with Warner's, were stayed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The Supreme Court later dissolved its stay after an executive order from Gov. Mary Fallin called the ruling an overreach.
The inmates had their executions delayed after a district judge agreed with their attorneys that a law allowing the state to keep secret its source of lethal injection drugs was unconstitutional. Lawyers argued drugs made at a compounding pharmacy used in their lethal injections could prove faulty and asked to know the source in order to verify their purity. The men were granted stays until their case was fully adjudicated.
In its ruling dissolving its original stay, the state Supreme Court also reversed the district court ruling, allowing the executions to go forward.
The state announced this month that after an exhaustive search, it was able to acquire the drugs to be used - midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride - directly from a manufacturer.
As recently as Friday, the convicted murderers' attorneys appealed to the state Court of Criminal Appeals for another delay in the executions. The court rejected that request.
Monday, a group known as Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty announced it would hold a sit-in from 2 to 5 p.m. Tuesday at the governor's office and a protest and silent vigil in front of the Governor's Mansion at 5:15 p.m.
Source: Associated Press, April 29, 2014
Anti-death penalty group to host protest and vigil for 2 death row inmates set for execution
An Oklahoma anti-death penalty group will host a protest and vigil to show their objection to the execution of two death-row inmates, the state's 1st double execution since 1937.
The Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty on Tuesday will host a sit-in at Gov. Mary Fallin's office, followed by a vigil at the governor's mansion.
Last week the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner aren't entitled to know the source of the drugs that will be used to kill them.
Lockett was found guilty of the 1999 shooting death of 19-year-old Stephanie Nieman. Warner was convicted for the 1997 death of his roommate's 11-month-old daughter.
Both executions were originally scheduled for March, but were moved because the state didn't have the necessary drugs.
Source: Associated Press, April 29, 2014
Oklahoma set to execute two inmates using untested drug cocktail
Oklahoma prison officials were spending Tuesday afternoon making final preparations for the state's first double-execution in nearly eight decades. Clayton Lockett is scheduled to die 6pm local time at the state penitentiary in McAlester; Charles Warner is scheduled to follow at 8pm. Both executions will be carried out with a drug cocktail in dosages never before tried in American executions.
Lockett, 38, was convicted in the killing of 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman in 1999. She was shot and buried alive. Lockett was convicted of raping her friend in the violent home invasion that lead to Neiman's death.
Warner, 46, was convicted of raping and killing 11-month-old Adrianna Waller in 1997. He lived with the child’s mother.
The state plans to lethally inject Lockett and Warner with midazolam followed by vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Florida has used a similar method, but it employed a dose of midazolam that is five times greater. And Ohio used midazolam with a different drug, hydromorphone, in the January execution of Dennis McGuire, which took longer than 20 minutes.
The double executions come after an unprecedented legal and political dispute in Oklahoma.
The inmates challenged the secrecy surrounding Oklahoma’s source of lethal injection drugs. They won at the state district court level, but two higher courts argued over which could grant a stay of execution. When the state supreme court stayed their executions so it could consider their constitutional claim, the Republican governor Mary Fallin said it had no authority to grant the stay. A House member said he would try to have the justices who wanted the stay impeached.
The court then ruled against the prisoners and lifted the stay.
Source: The Guardian, April 29, 2014