Two recent media reports reveal addi­tion­al details of irreg­u­lar­i­ties in Oklahoma’s admin­is­tra­tion and defense of its lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures. A sto­ry in The Atlantic describes in detail the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett and the failed attempts made by a para­medic and a doc­tor to insert the IV into Lockett’s veins. A Buzzfeed report asserts that Oklahoma’s brief to the Supreme Court in the lethal injec­tion case, Glossip v. Gross, made mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions about the state’s efforts to obtain lethal injec­tion drugs. The Atlantic reports that, after fail­ing to insert the IV in Lockett’s arm, the para­medic sought help from the doc­tor, Johnny Zellmer, and describes their unsuc­cess­ful attempts to insert the nee­dle in Lockett’s neck and chest before decid­ing to place the IV in the femoral vein near his groin. However, the longest nee­dle avail­able in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber was less than half the length nec­es­sary to reach the femoral vein. ​“We’ll just have to make it work,” the doc­tor report­ed­ly said. After the drugs were admin­is­tered and Lockett began to strug­gle and writhe on the gur­ney, the doc­tor checked the IV and found that it was dis­placed. When Zellmer pushed the nee­dle back into Lockett’s vein, blood squirt­ed all over him, soak­ing his jack­et. ​“You’ve hit the artery,” the para­medic said. ​“It’ll be all right,” Zellmer told her. ​“We’ll go ahead and get the drugs.” Ten min­utes lat­er, before addi­tion­al drugs could be admin­is­tered, Lockett was del­cared dead. Buzzfeed report­ed that Oklahoma had mis­in­formed the Supreme Court that its sup­pli­er of com­pound­ed pen­to­bar­bi­tal had come ​“under intense pres­sure from death penal­ty oppo­nents” to cease mak­ing the lethal injec­tion drug ​“and sub­se­quent­ly declined to con­tin­ue sup­ply­ing the drug to Oklahoma.” It sup­plied a redact­ed copy of let­ter in sup­port of that claim. The phar­ma­cy, how­ev­er, told Buzzfeed that it had nev­er sup­plied any drugs to Oklahoma for any exe­cu­tion, and an unredact­ed copy of the let­ter showed that it had actu­al­ly been sent to Texas, not Oklahoma, prison officials. 

The mis­at­tri­bu­tion, which the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office called ​“an inad­ver­tant cita­tion error,” under­mined Oklahoma’s argu­ment that it had turned to mida­zo­lam only because its ​“exhaus­tive” efforts to obtain oth­er drugs had proved fruit­less. The Atlantic arti­cle also describes Oklahoma’s deci­sion-mak­ing process behind the selec­tion of mida­zo­lam as the first drug in its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. According to the arti­cle, the gen­er­al coun­sel of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections — who was not a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al — was respon­si­ble for choos­ing the drug and select­ed it on the advice of his coun­ter­part at the Ohio Department of Corrections, which had used mida­zo­lam in the botched exe­cu­tion of Dennis McGuire.

(J. Stern, ​“Cruel and Unusual,” The Atlantic, June 2015; C. McDaniel, ​“Oklahoma’s Attorney General Misled Supreme Court About Letter On Execution Drug Availability,” Buzzfeed News, May 12, 2015; C. McDaniel, ​“Oklahoma Attorney General Admits ​‘Error’ In Brief To Supreme Court, But Says It Has No Bearing On Case,” Buzzfeed News, May 13, 2015.) See Lethal Injection.

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