AG revises timetable for resuming executions
The Oklahoma attorney general’s office has pushed back its timetable for resuming executions, telling the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals that the Oct. 7 date requested for death row inmate John Marion Grant is too soon to meet state requirements.
In a brief filed on Friday with the court, Attorney General John O’Connor said Corrections Department procedures require that an inmate be given 35 days notice before execution and that Oct. 7 would no longer be appropriate. O’Connor originally requested the date on Aug. 25, which would have allowed for compliance with the 35-day requirement, but the appeals court did not respond.
The attorney general asked Friday that Grant’s execution date now be set for Oct. 28 or Nov. 18 and that dates be set for six other executions at three
week intervals to allow for potential clemency hearings.
Oklahoma has not carried out an execution since 2015, when a series of mistakes led to a moratorium. Then, state officials could not find one of the drugs needed for lethal injection and explored the use of nitrogen gas before announcing last year that a reliable source had been found for the lethal injection drug.
Though the decision was made to resume executions with lethal injection, the attorney general’s office agreed not to seek execution dates while inmates challenged the state’s execution protocols in federal court.
O’Connor asked for execution dates for seven inmates after a federal judge ruled that six no longer qualified to be part of a federal lawsuit challenging the protocols; the seventh had not been part of the lawsuit.
Attorneys for the inmates have challenged O’Connor’s request for dates on numerous grounds, including that issues remain unresolved regarding the drug used as a sedative during the lethal injection process.
The attorney general said he is asking for execution dates in the order that the inmates exhausted their appeals.
Under his request, the order would be: John Marion Grant; Julius Jones; Bigler Stouffer; Wade Lay; Donald Grant; Gilbert Postelle; and James Coddington.