BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
NORTON META TAG
02 May 2014
Oklahoma Botches Clayton Lockett's Execution & Oklahoma Double Execution Botched - One Dead After Complications, 2nd Stayed & Failed Experiments: Stop All Lethal Injections Now 29APR&1MAI14
THE murderer, clayton lockett, committed a heinous crime for which he was tried and sentenced to death. But what happened to him when Oklahoma murdered him on 29 APR 14 is no different than the horrible, inhumane "experiments" todesengel josef mengele in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Had mengele be captured after WW II he would have been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. If the governor of any state in the U.S. allows an execution to be carried out using these unregulated drugs then they are in fact conducting inhumane medical experiments on living human beings ans so should be charged with crimes against humanity. I believe the death penalty is morally wrong, especially in a nation that the majority of national politicians proclaim (for political gain with few actually practicing what they preach) as being a Christian nation. I also believe the recent series of botched executions in various states have been violations of the U.S. Constitution's 8th Amendment so all pending executions using the same technique must be stayed by the states or federal government. To those who argue the law is the law and the sentences must be carried out I would remind them when state law violates the U.S. Constitution the Constitution trumps state law. From Daily Kos, HuffPost and the ACLU (I am a member and proud of it).......
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma prison officials have halted
the execution of an inmate after botching the delivery of a new
three-drug combination.
An official told the Associated Press that inmate Clayton Lockett died and that all three drugs were administered.
Robert Patton, the director of the Oklahoma Department of
Corrections, halted Lockett's execution about 20 minutes after the first
drug was administered. Patton says there was a vein failure.
Vein failure? Try 8th Amendment failure.
Jeffrey Toobin tweeted that the now deceased Clayton Lockett was
still mumbling many minutes after the drugs were administered, which
prompted the Dept. Of Corrections Director to cancel the executions.
Lockett was transported to a hospital, but apparently died of cardiac
arrest.
Good God, this event is so nauseating, it makes one embarassed to be
an American. Let's hope it spells the end of lethal injections in this
country. And maybe a moratorium on all executions. Feh.
@SimonNRicketts retweeted this chilling sequence (read from bottom up):
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) -- An Oklahoma death row inmate
writhed, clenched his teeth and appeared to struggle against the
restraints holding him to a gurney before prison officials halted an
execution in which the state was using a new drug combination for the
first time. The man later died of a heart attack.
Clayton Lockett,
38, was declared unconscious 10 minutes after the first of three drugs
in the state's new lethal injection combination was administered Tuesday
evening. Three minutes later, he began breathing heavily, writhing,
clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.
Officials later blamed a ruptured vein for the problems with the
execution, which are likely to fuel more debate about the ability of
states to administer lethal injections that meet the U.S. Constitution's
requirement they be neither cruel nor unusual punishment.
The
blinds eventually were lowered to prevent those in the viewing gallery
from watching what was happening in the death chamber, and the state's
top prison official later called a halt to the proceedings. Lockett died
of a heart attack shortly thereafter, the Department of Corrections
said.
"It was a horrible thing to witness. This was totally botched," said Lockett's attorney, David Autry.
Questions
about execution procedures have drawn renewed attention from defense
attorneys and death penalty opponents in recent months, as several
states scrambled to find new sources of execution drugs because
drugmakers that oppose capital punishment -- many based in Europe --
have stopped selling to U.S. prisons and corrections departments.
Defense
attorneys have unsuccessfully challenged several states' policies of
shielding the identities of the source of their execution drugs.
Missouri and Texas, like Oklahoma, have both refused to reveal their
sources and both of those states have carried out executions with their
new supplies.
Tuesday was the first time Oklahoma used the
sedative midazolam as the first element in its execution drug
combination. Other states have used it before; Florida administers 500
milligrams of midazolam as part of its three-drug combination. Oklahoma
used 100 milligrams of that drug.
"They should have anticipated
possible problems with an untried execution protocol," Autry said.
"Obviously the whole thing was gummed up and botched from beginning to
end. Halting the execution obviously did Lockett no good."
Republican
Gov. Mary Fallin ordered a 14-day stay of execution for an inmate who
was scheduled to die two hours after Lockett, Charles Warner. She also
ordered the state's Department of Corrections to conduct a "full review
of Oklahoma's execution procedures to determine what happened and why
during this evening's execution."
Robert Patton, the department's
director, halted Lockett's execution about 20 minutes after the first
drug was administered. He later said there had been vein failure.
The
execution began at 6:23 p.m., when officials began administering the
midazolam. A doctor declared Lockett to be unconscious at 6:33 p.m.
Once
an inmate is declared unconscious, the state's execution protocol calls
for the second drug, a paralytic, to be administered. The third drug in
the protocol is potassium chloride, which stops the heart. Patton said
the second and third drugs were being administered when a problem was
noticed. He said it's unclear how much of the drugs made it into the
inmate's system.
Lockett began writhing at 6:36. At 6:39, a doctor lifted the sheet that was covering the inmate to examine the injection site.
"There
was some concern at that time that the drugs were not having that
(desired) effect, and the doctor observed the line at that time and
determined the line had blown," Patton said at a news conference
afterward, referring to Lockett's vein rupturing.
After an official lowered the blinds, Patton made a series of phone calls before calling a halt to the execution.
"After
conferring with the warden, and unknown how much drugs went into him,
it was my decision at that time to stop the execution," Patton told
reporters.
Lockett was declared dead at 7:06 p.m.
Autry,
Lockett's attorney, was immediately skeptical of the department's
determination that the issue was limited to a problem with Lockett's
vein.
"I'm not a medical professional, but Mr. Lockett was not
someone who had compromised veins," Autry said. "He was in very good
shape. He had large arms and very prominent veins."
The American
Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, which was not a party in the legal
challenge to the state's execution law, called for an immediate
moratorium on state executions.
"This evening we saw what happens
when we allow the government to act in secret at its most powerful
moment and the consequences of trading due process for political
posturing," said ACLU executive director Ryan Kiesel.
In Ohio, the
January execution of an inmate who made snorting and gasping sounds led
to a civil rights lawsuit by his family and calls for a moratorium. The
state has stood by the execution but said Monday that it's boosting the
dosages of its lethal injection drugs.
A four-time felon, Lockett
was convicted of shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman and watching as
two accomplices buried her alive in rural Kay County in 1999. Neiman and
a friend had interrupted the men as they robbed a home.
Warner
had been scheduled to be executed 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, Fallin had issued a stay of her own
-- a one-week delay in Lockett's execution that resulted in both men
being scheduled to die on the same day.
Assurances about lethal injection rest on the premise that
inmates are sedated and unconscious before other excruciating drugs are
administered. The horrifying experiences of recent executions make clear
these assurances are false. The drugs used in recent executions
produced not a sleep into death but many wakeful minutes of struggle and
pain. Such executions are clear violations of the Eighth Amendment's
prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and require investigation
and action.
In other words, no human being should be death's guinea pig.
We were all reminded of this Tuesday night when the state of Oklahoma executed Clayton Lockett
in a gruesome experiment. Using an untested protocol, with secretly
obtained drugs, the state started Lockett's execution at 6:23 p.m. Ten
minutes later, Locket was pronounced unconscious and administered the
second and third drugs. Shortly thereafter, it became clear that Lockett
was not unconscious as he writhed, breathed heavily, and mumbled. He
clenched his teeth and tried to rise off the bed. His lawyer said it
looked "like torture." The prison officials then dropped the blinds,
blocking the view. The warden called off the execution, announcing the
obvious: The doctor had observed a problem. He said Lockett's "vein had
blown," and they did not know how much of the drugs he had received.
Lockett died shortly thereafter of a heart attack when his heart
literally burst in his chest. As the White House acknowledges, Lockett's execution fell short of the humane standards required when the death penalty is carried out.
This was not the first failed experiment in new lethal injection
protocols – and not even in Oklahoma. The main drug used in earlier
years of lethal injection, sodium thiopental, is no longer available
because its manufacturers object to the use of medication for killing.
This has led states to concoct new execution protocols and to scramble
for alternative drugs.
The new protocols are no more scientific. Recent executions have
relied on pentobarbital or midazolam. Both have terrible track records.
The reports from observers of Lockett's execution, which used midazolam,
have a strong resemblance to those from Dennis McGuire,
whose botched execution in Ohio took place a few months earlier in
January. After McGuire was reported by the prison as unconscious, he
clenched his fist, heaved, struggled, and made horrible noises,
according to witnesses. He was gasping, choking, and snoring in the 25
minutes it took to kill him. The Ohio death recipe is the same that Louisiana wants to follow.
We know that pentobarbital, the other drug used in recent executions,
will cause excruciating pain in poorly regulated or contaminated
batches. Before its new protocol, Oklahoma relied on pentobarbital. This
was what was used to execute death row inmate Michael Lee Wilson, who cried out during his execution, "I feel my whole body burning."
These botched executions raise critical questions: Why did the
execution go so wrong? Is there any reason to think that these
particular protocols and combinations of drugs would ever work? Where
did the drugs come from, and were the drugs themselves contaminated?
Lockett's lawyers had tried to get answers about the source and the
quality of the drugs to be used well before his execution, and a lower
court initially ruled that Oklahoma would have to provide these details.
But after a wild and unbelievable litigation path – which involved a
lawmaker threatening to impeach the state supreme court and the governor
asserting that she was not required to follow the supreme court's
ruling – the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the execution could
proceed in a cloud of secrecy.
Where the drugs come from is a critical question. Many of the drugs –
including pentobarbital – are not available through traditional
manufacturers and can only be obtained through compounding pharmacies, where reliability and safety are major concerns. Eric Robert
was executed in 2012 by South Dakota using compounded pentobarbital.
After he was injected, he gasped heavily, snored loudly with his eyes
open, and his skin turned purple. An expert pharmacologist has described
this reaction as consistent with contaminated drugs.
States have tried to fend off these critical inquires about the
sources of their drugs by relying on secrecy statutes or litigation. The
Supreme Court has yet to wade into this area, but a federal appeals
court allowed a Missouri execution to go forward under a total veil of
secrecy about where the drugs came from. As a dissenting justice
described, the "pharmacy on which Missouri relies could be nothing more
than a high school class."
Last month, the UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
– a treaty ratified by the United States in 1992, expressed concerns
regarding the use of untested drugs in lethal injections. The committee
noted "with concern reports about the administration, by some states, of
untested lethal drugs to execute prisoners and the withholding of
information about such drugs."
The committee recommended
that the U.S. government "ensure that lethal drugs used for executions
originate from legal, regulated sources, and are approved by the United
States Food and Drug Administration and that information on the origin
and composition of such drugs is made available to individuals scheduled
for execution."
These recommendations – transparency and oversight by the F.D.A. of
all drugs used in lethal injections – are important ones, but we need
full answers about what has gone so horribly wrong. Governor Mary Fallin
has acknowledged the need for investigation, but so far, she has failed
to appoint an independent investigation. Oklahoma has given us no
reason to have confidence that an executive investigation will provide
any serious inquiry.
Before Oklahoma, or any other state, engages in executions, we need
real answers from an independent investigation. Only with that
information can states formulate the effective and transparent standards
that the Constitution requires. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/29/1295725/-Oklahoma-Double-Execution-Botched-One-Dead-After-Complications-2nd-Stayed?detail=email
Oklahoma Supreme Court Grants Execution Stays For 2 Inmates
Oklahoma Secures Non-Compounded Execution Drugs
Oklahoma to proceed with scheduled executions
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