As Texas Prepares for First Execution of 2020, Oklahoma Marks Five Years with No Executions

As Texas pre­pared to car­ry out the first exe­cu­tion of 2020 on January 15, neigh­bor­ing Oklahoma — once the sec­ond most pro­lif­ic exe­cu­tion­er in the United States — marked five years since its last exe­cu­tion. The states present a con­trast in exe­cu­tion prac­tices. Though the use of the death penal­ty has sharply declined in both states, Texas con­tin­ues to lead the nation in exe­cu­tions, while Oklahoma will join the near­ly two-thirds of death-penal­ty states (18 of 29) that have not car­ried out any exe­cu­tions in at least five years. 

Texas exe­cut­ed John Gardner (pic­tured) for the 2005 mur­der of his estranged wife, short­ly before their divorce was to be final­ized. On January 13, 2020, the Supreme Court declined to review Gardner’s claim that his tri­al lawyer had been inef­fec­tive for fail­ing to present an ​“aban­don­ment rage” defense to the mur­der charges. Gardner will be the 568^th pris­on­er exe­cut­ed by Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute in 1976, by far the most of any state. Texas car­ried out more exe­cu­tions than any oth­er state in 2018 (13) and 2019 (9), and already has eight exe­cu­tions sched­uled through May 2020. 

By con­trast, Oklahoma — whose 112 exe­cu­tions are the third most of any state — shows no signs of resum­ing exe­cu­tions any time soon. Representatives of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, the state attor­ney gen­er­al, and Gov. Kevin Stitt all told Frontier edi­tor-in-chief Dylan Goforth that they remained in dis­cus­sions for resum­ing exe­cu­tions but had no timetable for when that might occur. 

Oklahoma’s last three exe­cu­tion attempts have been botched or bun­gled. On April 29, 2014, the state botched the exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett, in a scene the war­den lat­er described as ​“a bloody mess.” After 16 failed attempts to set an IV line, one of Lockett’s veins explod­ed. Lockett died 45 min­utes into the pro­ce­dure of what was described at the time as a mas­sive heart attack. Five years ago, on January 15, 2015, the state exe­cut­ed Charles Warner using an unau­tho­rized drug, potas­si­um acetate, in place of potas­si­um chlo­ride, the third drug required in Oklahoma’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col. Potassium acetate is some­times used by air­ports to de-ice the wings of planes. Warner’s final words were ​“my body is on fire.” Oklahoma’s last attempt­ed exe­cu­tion was in September 2015, when the state halt­ed the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip after prison offi­cials became aware two hours before the exe­cu­tion that they once again had obtained the wrong drug.

In 2016, an Oklahoma grand jury issued a scathing report detail­ing ​“bla­tant vio­la­tions” of the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. The vio­la­tions, the report found, occurred at vir­tu­al­ly every stage of the exe­cu­tion process and involved numer­ous mem­bers of the exe­cu­tion team, includ­ing the Director of the Department of Corrections and the war­den at the prison where the exe­cu­tion took place.

As part of an agree­ment in a fed­er­al law­suit chal­leng­ing the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures, Oklahoma may not seek exe­cu­tion dates for at least five months after a new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col is adopt­ed. In 2018, the state announced plans to use nitro­gen gas, rather than lethal injec­tion, in exe­cu­tions, but no offi­cial pro­to­col has been adopted.

Although Texas remains the most pro­lif­ic state by num­ber of exe­cu­tions, even it has seen an ero­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Executions have declined from 35 in 1999 and 40 in 2000 few­er than ten in three of the last four years.

The decline in new death sen­tences in Texas has been even more dra­mat­ic. New death sen­tences peaked in Texas in the mid- to late-1990s, aver­ag­ing 39.2 per year from 1994 through 1999. By con­trast, the entire United States aver­aged 39.2 death sen­tences per year in the five years span­ning 2015 – 2019 and Texas imposed a total of 21 new death sen­tences — an aver­age of 4.2 per year — in that time peri­od. In 2019, eight juries faced a choice to sen­tence a defen­dant to death or life with­out parole and half chose to impose life sen­tences. The four death sen­tences imposed in 2019 rep­re­sent­ed a 92% decline from the 48 peo­ple Texas sen­tenced to death in 1999.