As the antic­i­pat­ed late-June deci­sion by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Oklahoma lethal injec­tion case, Glossip v. Gross, approach­es, the Oklahoma state courts have ruled that a media law­suit seek­ing dis­cov­ery and depo­si­tions relat­ing to the state’s botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett may pro­ceed. On June 8, the Oklahoma Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly denied a motion filed by Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin to block action in Branstetter v. Fallin, a law­suit filed by the Reporters Committee on Freedom of the Press on behalf Tulsa Frontier edi­tor Ziva Branstetter and the Tulsa World. As described by Branstetter, the law­suit seeks dis­clo­sure of ​“why attor­neys [for Oklahoma] blacked out hun­dreds of sen­tences and dozens of pages in inter­view tran­scripts relat­ed to the exe­cu­tion.” Oklahoma has for more than a year failed to act on an open records law request for these records. Branstetter says “[t]he secre­cy sur­round­ing the exe­cu­tion almost cer­tain­ly con­tributed to the ​‘pro­ce­dur­al dis­as­ter’ and inter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism that fol­lowed. But the secrecy continues.”

Among oth­er mat­ters, the iden­ti­ties of 23 of the 101 peo­ple inter­viewed by the Oklahoma Department of Public in its inves­ti­ga­tion of the Lockett exe­cu­tion were nev­er dis­closed. Records that were dis­closed revealed that the prison staff had felt pres­sured by hav­ing to con­duct two exe­cu­tions on the same night and that the doc­tor who was present at the exe­cu­tion — described as the state’s ​“third choice” — had said he received not received any train­ing oth­er than that he would be asked to pro­nouce death after the exe­cu­tion. She said the records showed that ​“Lockett had to help the med­ical team find a vein but the IV still failed, pos­si­bly because DOC lacked the right nee­dles.” Branstetter said anoth­er record dis­closed that prison war­den Anita Trammell had informed inves­ti­ga­tors that the state attor­ney gen­er­al’s office had pre­pared and asked to her sign an affi­davit stat­ing that she had ver­i­fied the pharmacist’s license and the expi­ra­tion dates on the lethal drugs, when she had not done so. 

(Ziva Branstetter, ​“Court refus­es to grant stay in exe­cu­tion records suit,” The Frontier (June 9, 2015); Cary A. Spinwall, ​“Tulsa World sues Fallin, DPS over exe­cu­tion records,“The Tulsa World (Dec. 23, 2014); Dara Lind, ​“What you need to know before the Supreme Court’s death penal­ty rul­ing,” Vox (June 10, 2015)) See Lethal Injection.

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