Oklahoma Botched an Execution With Untested Lethal Injection Drugs

Daniel_Stuckey (2647775) writes "The state of Oklahoma had scheduled two executions for Tuesday, April 29th. This in spite of myriad objections that the drugs being used for both lethal injections had not been tested, and thus could violate the constitutional right to the courts, as well as the 8th Amendment: protection from cruel and unusual punishment. After much legal and political wrangling, the state proceeded with the executions anyway. It soon became clear that the critics' worst case scenarios were coming true — Oklahoma violently botched the first execution. The inmate "blew" a vein and had a heart attack. The state quickly postponed the second one. 'After weeks of Oklahoma refusing to disclose basic information about the drugs for tonight's lethal injection procedures, tonight, Clayton Lockett was tortured to death,' Madeline Cohen, the attorney of Charles Warner, the second man scheduled for execution, said in a statement. Katie Fretland at The Guardian reported from the scene of the botched attempt to execute Lockett using the untested, unvetted, and therefore potentially unconstitutional lethal injection drugs." sciencehabit also points out a study indicating that around 4% of death row inmates in the U.S. are likely innocent.

Comments

GOP is just sad.

[WindBourne]

Is that the GOP forces medicare part D to pay top $ for meds, services, which is why it costs more than ACA.
Yet, the same GOP is unwilling to fork money for the drugs necessary to do these executions correctly to have them manufactured in the US.

What a looney bunch that has a great deal in common with the worst leaders in history.

Re:Cruel and Unsual Punishment

[WindBourne]

At one time, the world was thought to be flat, and after that, many thought that the universe rotated around the earth (and plenty of GOP still do). Is that what you want to go back to, or are you going to allow science and knowledge to take hold and make changes in our policy?