Death in Oklahoma: a sloppy, sordid affair

The shamefully sloppy execution this week of convicted killer Clayton D. Lockett should give pause to even the most ardent supporters of capital punishment.
The Oklahoma convict was left to gasp and moan under the effects of the drugs the Sooner State used. Eventually Lockett died of what officials said was a massive heart attack.
Ziva Branstetter, an editor at The Tulsa World, was a witness. She wrote that Lockett had begun rolling his head from side to side. “He again mumbles something we can’t understand, except for the word ‘man,' ” she wrote. “He lifts his head and shoulders off the gurney several times, as if he’s trying to sit up. He appears to be in pain.”
The whole messy business took 43 minutes.


The pillow is a nice touch, don't you think?

To be sure, there are those who believe those facing the death penalty deserve something less than a quick, painless death. They should, some believe, suffer at least as much as their victims. And Lockett's victim must have suffered. He was found guilty of shooting a woman and burying her alive.
However, such Old Testament eye-for-an-eye thinking at best violates the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" and at worst countenances barbarism. There is a reason we no longer draw and quarter convicted killers, no matter how heinous their crimes. Even the Nazis convicted at Nuremberg after World War II, guilty as they were of crimes horrific beyond comprehension, were dispatched quickly by a hangman.
Not Lockett. Oklahoma officials blame the botched execution on one of Lockett's veins collapsing. That hindered the flow of the deadly cocktail being pumped into his body, they said.
Others are less sure that was the cause, especially since the state was using the sedative midazolam for the first time. Then another unnamed agent was then supposed to stop his heart. There also have been problems in states that execute by lethal injection with the placement of intravenous catheters and making sure they were working. Those placing the IV lines, and they are presumed to be prison officials although their identity is always kept secret, are not doctors or nurses.
Oklahoma has exercised considerable secrecy about the doses it used and even the where the state got the chemical. This has been the pattern in many states, including California, that still have the death penalty. Growing public apprehensions about capital punishment has led some companies to stop producing the chemicals and others to stop selling them to the states.
And Oklahoma is not alone in having problems with lethal injections. In January, an Ohio convict gasped for more than 10 minutes while dying.
 “The move to lethal injection in 1977 was an effort to combat all the ills associated with other methods," Fordham University law professor Deborah W. Denno said. Nevertheless, we’ve seen botch after botch.”
Added Ohio State University sentencing law expert Douglas A. Berman, "There's a reasonable modern consensus that death alone should be our maximum punishment, not a torturous death."
Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma has ordered an independent review of the state's death penalty procedures. That's the least the state should do.