Oklahoma | Doctor paid $15,000 each time death penalty carried out, $1,000 a day for participating in training leading up to executions

Oklahoma pays a doctor $15,000 per execution for duties that include performing a consciousness check and verifying death during the lethal injection process.

A top corrections official testified about the payments Monday during a hearing in Oklahoma City federal court.

The doctor, who was not identified, does not administer the 3 drugs used to carry out the death penalty in Oklahoma.

The doctor and an IV team, however, are involved in verifying the drugs are correct and in placing the IV lines.

Justin Farris, the chief of operations at the Oklahoma Corrections Department, recruited the doctor last year.

He said the doctor also is paid $1,000 a day for participating in training leading up to executions.

That training usually takes place once a week and twice on the week an execution is scheduled, according to his testimony.

The hearing Monday involved a request by two inmates for execution stays.

Donald A. Grant is set to be executed Jan. 27, and Gilbert Ray Postelle is set to be executed Feb. 17.

Their attorneys complain Oklahoma corrections officials use a sedative, midazolam, that does not work the way they say it will. The attorneys argued inmate John Marion Grant suffocated to death on his own vomit because of it when he was executed in October.

U.S. District Judge Scott Friot is expected to rule on the request later this week. Inmate Bigler Jobe "Bud" Stouffer II was executed in December after the judge rejected his request for a stay.

Stouffer's attorneys also had complained about midazolam, saying its use would expose him to an unconstitutional level of pain.

Donald Grant, 46, was sentenced to death for killing 2 workers at the LaQuinta Inn in Del City during a 2001 robbery.

Postelle, 35, was convicted of murdering four people on Memorial Day 2005 outside a trailer in Del City. He was sentenced to death for two of the murders and to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the other 2.

Their attorneys told the judge Monday they would prefer to be executed by a firing squad.

John Marion Grant was executed Oct. 28 for fatally stabbing a female prison kitchen worker in 1998. Media witnesses reported he repeatedly convulsed and threw up during the procedure.

The judge was told Monday that John Grant was eating and drinking just before a restraint team took him for a shower and then escorted him to the execution chamber.

John Grant was observed "eating potato chips from a large bag and drinking a 2 liter bottle of Pibb Xtra in a hurried manner," investigators noted in an internal report admitted into evidence Monday.

The time was 3:15 p.m., just 45 minutes before the execution was to begin, according to a logbook also admitted into evidence.

During John Grant's execution, the doctor and a nurse came in at one point to clean the vomit from his face, according to testimony.

Farris oversees the execution procedure from inside the chamber. His role includes reading the death warrant.

He recalled Monday how John Grant cursed him over and over as he read. The official also recalled John Grant saying "he would kill the b---- again."

He recalled Stouffer was just the opposite. He said Stouffer was polite and said "Father forgive them" for a last statement.

During both executions, the doctor did a sternum rub with his knuckles to determine if the inmate was unconscious, according to the testimony.

The doctor also did a check on John Grant involving the eyelids, according to the testimony. The doctor also shook Stouffer and called out Stouffer's name before concluding the inmate was unconscious.

Source: The Oklahoman, Nolan Clay, January 12, 2022

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Florida executes Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’ A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Florida to execute William Thompson after nearly 48 years on death row

On Sept. 11, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a death warrant for William Thompson, convicted of the 1976 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 23-year-old Sally Ivester. Thompson, now 74, and another man were staying in a Miami Beach hotel room with Ivester and another woman, according to court records. After Ivester was unable to get money from her mother, the men beat and tortured her, prosecutors said. She died from internal bleeding and multiple injuries. Thompson was convicted in 1978 of kidnapping, rape, and first-degree murder.

Singapore | Ministry of Home Affairs refutes claims that death penalty was discussed during visit by Israel's security ministry

The Ministry of Home Affairs says discussions with the Israeli government involved the sharing of best practices in emergency response, crime prevention, and forensics. Issues relating to the death penalty “were never part of the meeting and were not discussed." SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday (Sep 11) refuted claims by an Israeli media outlet that the death penalty was discussed during a visit by an Israeli delegation in May. The Haaretz newspaper reported on Sep 7 that a delegation comprising representatives from the Israel Prison Service and National Security Ministry made a “secret visit” to Singapore that month.

Afghanistan | Signs that horrific brutality is set to return

Kneeling next to a ditch, deep in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, a 22-year-old woman draws her last breath in a 'desert court' before she is shot in the back with an AK-47. Her executioner? Likely her hardline militant husband, in what the Taliban consider an 'honour killing'. It took less than an hour to decide Najiba had been adulterous – although it has been suggested this accusation was fabricated to protect her husband's reputation. Adultery is a crime that deserves capital punishment under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Sharia law. Fourteen years on from her death, little is known about her story, like many women slowly being erased from the fabric of Afghan society.

California | He spent 19 years on death row. His conversion to Judaism helped him endure

Johnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin. Hands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm. For almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this—chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.

California | Becerra vows to extend moratorium despite past support for capital punishment

SACRAMENTO—Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor, he has vowed to block executions if elected in November. Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”

Alabama | Lethal injection for double murderer set for Thursday after court blocked nitrogen hypoxia execution in June

Alabama plans to execute Jeffery Lee on Thursday via lethal injection after a down-to-the-wire decision by the federal courts halted his death by nitrogen hypoxia in June. In response, Gov. Kay Ivey set the 30-hour window for the execution to be carried out by lethal injection beginning at 12 a.m. on Thursday, September 17, and expiring at 6 a.m. on Friday, September 18. Barring any further court action, the execution will take place at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Iran | Afghan Citizen Executed in Wheelchair Due to Severe Mobility Disability

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iranian authorities have reportedly executed an Afghan citizen, identified as Valijan Nourzay, at the central prison in Rafsanjan, according to the human rights organization Hengaw. Hengaw said in a statement on Sunday, September 6, that Nourzay was executed early Wednesday last week at Rafsanjan Central Prison. According to the organization, Nourzay had a severe mobility disability and was executed while in a wheelchair. Hengaw, citing informed sources, reported that Nourzay had been pursued by Iranian authorities three years ago over an alleged murder. He was reportedly seriously wounded after Iranian security forces opened fire on him in Rafsanjan before being arrested and later sentenced to death.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

Egypt TV presenter and 11 others sentenced to death in major drugs case

Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa and 11 others have been sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of drug trafficking and rape, while nine defendants received life sentences and seven were acquitted. Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa, 39, has been sentenced to death by hanging along with 11 other defendants after being found guilty in a drugs case involving a criminal gang accused of importing ingredients used to manufacture narcotics for sale.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog