Great article by my colleague Rosalyn Park on the tremendous problems with the drugs states are using to carry out executions now that the European Union (which has abolished the death penalty) prohibits the export of drugs for use in lethal injections. This is one of several death penalty issues that we raised last month at the UN Human Rights Committee’s review of the United States. This practice has to end – help spread the word!
Oklahoma botched last night’s execution of Clayton Lockett by using a new, untested lethal injection protocol. While execution officials had pronounced Lockett unconscious, he was awake minutes later, writhing and breathing heavily. In apparent pain, he fought the restraints that locked him to the gurney. As he continued to twitch and call out “Man” and “Something’s wrong,” officials closed the shutters to block viewers from witnessing an execution gone horribly wrong.
Officials halted the execution. Lockett died of a heart attack within the hour.
The latest bungled execution is a tragic reiteration of Ohio’s execution of Dennis McGuire, who was put to death in January with a new two-drug combination that had never been tested. What McGuire’s attorneys had argued prior to his execution came true: the drug combination caused their client to experience “air hunger” in his struggle to breathe. “Shortly after the warden buttoned his jacket to signal…
View original post 774 more words
