For death penalty advocates, Oklahoma was featuring a type of macabre double header tonight: two executions to be held within hours of each other. That objective however failed in a most disturbing possible way after the first execution of Clayton Lockett left him in obvious agony for over 25 minutes. He eventually died from a heart attack and the second execution was postponed.
Witnesses reported that Lockett could be seen kicking and lifting his head on the gurney. After sixteen minutes, the prison officials closed the blinds and barred witnesses. Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton then called a halt to the execution and issued a 14-day stay for the execution of Charles Warner. Patton described the problem as a “vein failure”
Lockett was sentenced to death for killing a woman during a home invasion burglary in 1999 while Warner (right) was sentenced to death for raping and murdering an 11-month old girl in 1997.
Notably, the execution tonight used a new combination of drugs after a shortage in lethal injection drugs arose from an international campaign. They gave Lockett the sedative midazolam which was to be followed by the muscle relaxant vecuronium bromide to stop breathing and then potassium chloride to stop the heart.
The botched execution will only magnify concerns that there remain too many unknowns about lethal injection and that it constitutes a cruel punishment.
Notably, this incident comes a day after the release of a new report showing over four percent of death row inmates are likely innocent. The calculation of one in 25 death row being innocent in the study contradicts the earlier statistical data offered by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia in a concurring opinion in 2007 when he said that the error rate was 0.027 percent “or, to put it another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent.”
The execution and the study raise two of the main objections over the death penalty: that it is cruel and that the criminal justice system still produces false convictions. However, 55 percent of people polled reportedly still support the death penalty while a substantial percentage of 39 percent now opposes it. This is clearly going to be a debate that will continue to rage, particularly after the horrific scene tonight in Oklahoma.
Source: CNN
@ Marco, ‘“Thou shalt not kill.” ‘ is a misquote. The actual quote is “Thou shalt not Murder”.
Marco
“Thou shalt not kill.” Life without the possibility of parole is the only humane sentence for those who murder.
LWOP is a much better option than a state, through its laws, prosecutors, juries and judges, conspiring to kill.
bettykath – you are against justifiable homicide then? Self-defense?
Before we concern ourselves with the immorality of capitol punishment, we need to advocate against killing people around the world to loot their oil and other valuable resources. The former may or may not be innocent. The latter are definitely innocent.
It is interesting, is it not, that people that are pro-abortion are anti-capital punishment while people who are anti-abortion are pro-capital punishment.
I have moved right from my early years as a longhaired Vista volunteer. When I was in college I was interviewed in a man on the street piece, a regular feature in the local paper. I have the yellowed clip packed away somewhere. I made my opposition to the death penalty on moral and practical grounds. That belief was only reinforced, on the practical level, by my working in the criminal justice system.
Someone mentioned Illinois and the death penalty. George Ryan, now a convicted felon from dealings while governor, ironically performed one of the most courageous acts in politics that I remember, commuting all the people on death row. There were simply too many suspect convictions coming out of Chicagoland. Are you all ready for the puff piece CNN doc on the teeny, tiny mayor, Rahm Emmanuel.
“that does not make me a barbarian, just an advocate of divine justice.”
The need for made-up deities to do one’s killing for them speaks further to entrenched childish barbarism. Deities have no place in our shared public square, especially the angry vengeful ones.
James – I am an Uncaused Cause sort of guy. Now, in Chicagoland I would agree that they need a moratorium on the death penalty. Too much police corruption going around to know who is really guilty. Where I live, judges are selected, not elected, they have no skin in the game. Appeals of the death penalty are automatic, according to the state constitution.
Jamie – you can be accused, not get a fair trial and still be acquitted. Happens. 🙂
“I am not an advocate of painless executions.”
Barbarism unleashed. It was long suspected, so this comment comes as no surprise.
Paul, I don’t think you mean ‘only that if you are convicted, you will get a fair trial.’ How about if you are accused you will supposedly get a fair trial….. Sixth Amendment:….’the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district ‘
James – that does not make me a barbarian, just an advocate of divine justice. 🙂
While I am opposed to the death penalty in most cases and torturing criminals to death, it seems that the karma of this guy inadvertently caught up with him since he shot and buried the victim while she was alive. So I can shed no tears for his death. There is no question about his guilt so there is no wrongful execution here.
The only reason I am opposed to the death penalty is the fact it is irreversible when it is used. If there is a way to guarantee that no innocent person will be executed, then I would be in favor it in all cases. Of course, that is an impossible thing to achieve. Since it is not feasible, the proponents must then state how many innocent persons are an acceptable level to be wrongly executed. How many probably innocent citizens must be sacrificed to keep the death penalty in place?
randyjet – given the number of executions every year, if 4% is a correct number, and I do not say it is, but just for the sake of argument, lets use it, I think it is statistically insignificant. Given all the rights you have, the number of appeals, the years taken before an execution, I think there is a fair shot that if you are not guilty, they are going to catch it.
Frankly-
Who cares about it being “messy”? There are people that clean up horrible biological messes every day in every city. As for what it did to the shooter, that position is normally voluntary, and there’s never a shortage of applicants. You could easily rig the gun so that it is fired remotely so that the executioner wouldn’t have to see it.
I hate these arguments about gore and such. If you destroy the brain faster than it can register pain, you eliminate any chance of a painful death, and that should be the priority, not delicate sensibilities. Use a gun, use dynamite, Hell, go Anton Chigur and use a pneumatic bolt gun.
We of course shouldn’t be doing it at all for many reasons, but if we are going to do it, let’s quit pretending we don’t know how to kill people without inflicting pain. Isaac has it right.
Annie, yes… Nitrogen gas! Of course…. just lower the ‘condemned’ into a tank filled with Liquid Nitrogen…. Frozen into a solid block of Excrement, in very few seconds. But for what this guy did, I’d rather use a vat of boiling acid…..
Mike A – if only 🙂
Paul S.:
Let me guess. Are you one of Antonin Scalia’s former law clerks?
The BBC has a documentary called “How to kill a human being” which discusses research into more humane methods of execution, including the use of nitrogen gas.
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/kill-human-being/
Annie – the BBC is under heavy attack for the propaganda in their programming and the amount of money they keep wasting. Think I would be a little queasy about anything coming out of the BBC right now.
I am not an advocate of painless executions. I think the eyes of the prisoners should be taped open and pictures of their victims taped on the walls, so the last thing they see are the people they killed. Cruel is hanging, drawing and quartering them. Unusual is impaling them on a sharpened post. Anything today is a calkwalk compared to those.
Professor, I have a difficult time reconciling your statement: ‘It is a measure of our society however that we continue to seek the most humane method.’ When 4% on death row are considered innocent, then there is no humane way to kill them. It’s inhumane for the state (society) to kill innocents under the guise of justice Bad people deserve punishment, but when the system lacks the ability to be 100% certain of its death sentences, then death can’t be a punishment option; it’s inhumane.
Jamie – the Constitution does not guarantee that if you are innocent you will not be convicted, only that if you are convicted, you will get a fair trial.
Not real sure that a man who invaded a home and murdered an innocent person in cold blood shouldn’t have pain upon execution. But that is not for me to decide. Our Framers decided it shouldn’t be cruel or unusual. Putting people to death with lethal injection certainly isn’t unusual. I never understood why we decided that hanging wasn’t the way to conduct these things. No pain on those and over in a second.
As for the other gentleman mentioned, the one who raped and killed an 11 month old, well a public hanging would be proper for this lunatic. Or perhaps a televised one.
Either way, not a lot of sympathy coming for those two fellows. Its God’s job to sort them out.
http://www.thepoliticalspectator.org
the death penalty, at least in my opinion, should be rarely used and public when administered. It should be gruesome, hanging or firing squad so that people will recoil at the thought of putting people to death. We put animals to “sleep”, the death penalty for humans should be used sparingly and not be something which is morally easy to apply.
Putting people to “sleep” may be humane but I believe that is a slippery slope toward euthanasia.
Bottom line…. A ‘murderer’ did actually die in Oklahoma….. But maybe the ‘Light of Mental Capacity’ Oklahoman’s ought to go back to using a rope, in their executions….. Surely they can figure out how to hang a guy. Just stand the Prisoner on top of a cross, placed right under a tall tree, throw thr rope over a high branch, place the noose around his neck….and then , just yank the cross out from underneath him………… That’s how Geebus would have done it!
“Thou shalt not kill.” Life without the possibility of parole is the only humane sentence for those who murder.