The Oklahoma Department of Corrections recent­ly gave the media a tour (see video here) of its new­ly ren­o­vat­ed exe­cu­tion cham­ber. The state spent over $100,000 updat­ing the rooms in response to the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in April. Among the changes are a new gur­ney (an ​“elec­tric bed”), a new inter­com, and an atom­ic clock. Previously, com­mu­ni­ca­tions includ­ed col­ored sticks pushed through a wall, with a red stick indi­cat­ing some­thing had gone wrong. Correctional offi­cials were secre­tive about the par­tic­i­pa­tion of med­ical per­son­nel, cit­ing ongo­ing lit­i­ga­tion. The state has said it will reduce the num­ber of media wit­ness­es from twelve to five. The ACLU and two media out­lets have asked a judge to stop the state from reduc­ing the num­ber of media wit­ness­es. ​“They took a process already cor­rupt­ed by secre­cy that had already led to at least one botched exe­cu­tion, and man­aged some­how to make it even more dif­fi­cult for the peo­ple of Oklahoma and their rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the media to know any­thing about that process,” said Ryan Kiesel, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma. (Image: The Guardian, link to video in text above).

(E. Pilkington, ​“The 21st cen­tu­ry death cham­ber: $100,000 for a civilised exe­cu­tion,” The Guardian, October 10, 2014; S. Murphy, ​“Oklahoma prison offi­cials unveil new death cham­ber,” Associated Press, October 9, 2014). See Executions and Lethal Injection.

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