A proposal by Oklahoma’s new attorney general to push back scheduled execution dates for death-row inmates may spark new debate over stresses faced by those charged with carrying out lethal injections.
Oklahoma’s current schedule of executing a death-row inmate roughly every 30 days is placing too much of a burden on prison staffers, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond wrote in a motion filed Wednesday with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.
The AG proposed a new schedule that would set executions at least 60 days apart.
“One aspect that has become clear over time is that the current pace of executions is unsustainable in the long run, as it is unduly burdening the (Department of Corrections) and its personnel,” Drummond wrote. “This is especially true given the extensive and intensive nature of the training DOC personnel undergo to prepare for each execution.”
A study published in 2015 by the National Institute of Corrections concluded that executions inflict emotional and psychological damage on people like prison guards and others involved in carrying them out. Beginning with “anticipatory trauma” that might occur when an execution date is set, stresses may continue even for years after an execution, the report found.
“Prison guards, who most closely interact with condemned prisoners on a daily basis, are particularly affected, including and especially those acting as executioners,” the NIC reported.
The organization added that more than 25% of U.S. prison employees experience depression, and having to deal with death penalty cases likely compounds anxiety and depression for many.
Drummond, who witnessed the recent execution of condemned murderer Scott Eizember at the state penitentiary in McAlester, said he made the request to the appeals court after meeting with DOC leaders and staff members.
Eizember’s execution was the eighth carried out in Oklahoma since the state resumed lethal injections in October 2021.
Oklahoma’s previous attorney general, John O’Connor, who was defeated by Drummond in Republican primary voting last year, had asked the court to schedule more than 25 executions at four-week intervals.
In a statement, the DOC said it appreciates Drummond’s request.
“The corrections professionals of this agency invest a significant amount of time in preparation to ensure these sentences are carried out with the utmost professionalism,” the statement said. “As always, ODOC will abide by the schedule set by the Court of Criminal Appeals.”
Opponents of the death penalty in the state have pointed out other serious concerns. An Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission in 2017 concluded that the state was in danger then of “barreling ahead” with an unprecedented number of executions despite numerous flaws found in implementation of the death penalty.
The commission was created in March 2016 during a pause in executions in the wake of botched lethal injections delivered to condemned inmates Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner in 2014 and 2015. Many of the executions carried out across the U.S. in 2022 also were found to have been “botched” or highly problematic, and seven of 20 execution attempts were either visibly problematic or took an inordinate amount of time, according to a report by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Oklahoma’s independent, bipartisan panel in 2017 included former prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges, citizens, crime victim advocates, and law professors, some of whom supported the death penalty and some who opposed it. Its report then also amplified concerns expressed at the national level about potentials for innocent people being sentenced to death.
The DPIC has reported that 30 death sentences imposed in Oklahoma have been reversed or prisoners have been exonerated because of prosecutorial misconduct.
Other Oklahomans have expressed doubts as to the morality of imposing death on any inmate.
Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City has called on state lawmakers to end the death penalty, saying it “only contributes to the continued coarsening of society and to the spiral of violence. … Taking another life does not ultimately bring closure and peace to those who have lost a loved one, and it goes against the principle of valuing life.”
Despite those sentiments, public support of the death penalty remains high in Oklahoma. A state question in 2016 on whether to enshrine it in the Oklahoma Constitution received more than 65% of the vote.
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
