Execution change won’t end questions
THE execution of Clayton Lockett in April 2014 prompted questions, legal and otherwise, about Oklahoma’s ability to carry out the ultimate punishment. These are sure to continue following the state’s decision to use nitrogen gas for future executions.
Attorney General Mike Hunter and Department of Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh announced the change last week. The difficulty in obtaining the three drugs used in Oklahoma executions, a longtime problem, contributed to the decision to go in a different direction.
Hunter and Allbaugh are following a recommendation by the state’s multicounty grand jury, which in 2016 said nitrogen gas would be easy and inexpensive to obtain, and simple to administer. Grand jurors also said scientific research showed the procedure would be quick and seemingly painless.
The Legislature, amid concerns stemming largely from the Lockett execution, passed a law in 2015 allowing nitrogen hypoxia for executions if drugs became unavailable or lethal injection was declared unconstitutional.
Lockett writhed on the gurney, moaned and clenched his teeth, and wasn’t pronounced dead until 43 minutes after the procedure began. That led to a state investigation that revealed, among other things, a lack of training among execution team members and faulty insertion of the intravenous line. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later said the execution was a “procedural disaster.”
Oklahoma also used the sedative midazolam for the first time in Lockett’s execution, triggering lawsuits from other death row inmates who said the drug could lead to an unconstitutional level of pain. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected that argument in 2015.
The state executed an inmate without incident in January 2015, but no one has been executed since. It later was found that a wrong drug was used inadvertently in that case, then the same wrong drug was almost used again in a planned execution in September of that year. A doctor’s discovery of the mistake led to all executions being put on hold.
After investigating the drug mix-up, the multicounty grand jury blamed egregious failures by DOC officials, subpar execution protocol and other issues. A new protocol, to include the new method of death, is a work in progress.
Oklahoma in 1977 became the first state to approve lethal injection. Now it may be leading the way on another method. Challenges are a certainty because this process is new. Mississippi has legalized nitrogen gas as a backup for its executions, and Alabama’s legislature wants to provide the option of being executed with nitrogen gas. But no state or country has used nitrogen for executions.
Sixteen condemned Oklahoma inmates have exhausted their appeals. They don’t have to start watching the calendar yet, however. Hunter and Allbaugh said executions would resume no earlier than the end of the year. The safe bet is that challenges will ensure it’s much later than that before one is actually carried out.
The goal, Allbaugh says, is for executions to be done “properly, fully transparent and as humane as possible.” Those can’t simply be goals; all three are a must as the state charts a new path for performing its most solemn task.