McALESTER, Okla. (AP) — An Oklahoma inmate whose execution was halted Tuesday because the delivery of a new drug combination was botched died of a heart attack, the head of the state Department of Corrections said.
Director Robert Patton said inmate Clayton Lockett (pictured, left) died Tuesday after all three drugs were administered.
Patton halted Lockett’s execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered. He said there was a vein failure.
The execution began at 6:23 p.m. when officials began administering the first drug, and a doctor declared Lockett to be unconscious at 6:33 p.m.
About three minutes later, though, Lockett began breathing heavily, writhing on the gurney, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow. After about three minutes, a doctor lifted the sheet that was covering Lockett to examine the injection site. After that, an official who was inside the death chamber lowered the blinds, preventing those in the viewing room from seeing what was happening.
Patton then made a series of phone calls before calling a halt to the execution. He also issued a 14-day postponement in the execution of inmate Charles Warner, who had been scheduled to die on Tuesday, two hours after Lockett was put to death.
“It was extremely difficult to watch,” Lockett’s attorney, David Autry, said afterward. He also questioned the amount of the sedative midazolam that was given to Lockett, saying he thought it was “an overdose quantity.” It was the first time Oklahoma administered midazolam as the first drug in its execution drug combination.
A four-time felon, Lockett, 38, was convicted of shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman with a sawed-off shotgun and watching as two accomplices buried her alive in rural Kay County in 1999 after Neiman and a friend arrived at a home the men were robbing.
Warner had been scheduled to be put to death two hours later in the same room and on the same gurney. The 46-year-old was convicted of raping and killing his roommate’s 11-month-old daughter in 1997. He has maintained his innocence.
Lockett and Warner had sued the state for refusing to disclose details about the execution drugs, including where Oklahoma obtained them.
The case, filed as a civil matter, placed Oklahoma’s two highest courts at odds and prompted calls for the impeachment of state Supreme Court justices after the court last week issued a rare stay of execution. The high court later dissolved its stay and dismissed the inmates’ claim that they were entitled to know the source of the drugs.
By then, Gov. Mary Fallin had weighed into the matter by issuing a stay of execution of her own — a one-week delay in Lockett’s execution that resulted in both men being scheduled to die on the same day.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
So all the “red meat” conservatives who use the death penalty as the channel for their bloodlust and vengeance should be delighted. Too bad we don’t set people on fire in botched executions any longer.
(“We tried to follow the 8th Amendment. Oops.”)
This is horrifying. Whatever these men did or were, we are theoretically bound both by the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and by our common humanity to treat them with at least a basic dignity; surely even those who believe in the death penalty cannot justify this kind of horror. I cannot imagine hating anyone enough to want to inflict this kind of pain, and I say that as someone who was a victim of a violent crime.
As ghastly as the death inflicted by the state is the salacious excitement of those who believe that this travesty has somehow served the cause of justice. If our willingness to tolerate and even embrace this kind of brutality is any measure of what kind of society we have become, then the tragedy is ours; we have become something less than fully human, which means that we have lost the right to judge men like these, no matter what they’ve done.
Also, this isn’t the first time I’ve read about officials shutting the blinds after a botched execution by injection. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having witnesses in the first place?
Not that it matters to you, but not all of us are motivated by fear.
In addition to the murder charge, Lockett was found guilty of conspiracy, first-degree burglary, three counts of assault with a dangerous weapon, three counts of forcible oral sodomy, four counts of first-degree rape, four counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery by force and fear. The charges were after former convictions of two or more felonies, according to the court clerk’s office.
So I’m not feelin his pain