A recent New York Times edi­to­r­i­al described the ​“hor­rif­ic scene” of Clayton Lockett’s botched exe­cu­tion and called on Oklahoma to “[fol­low] oth­er gov­er­nors and leg­is­la­tures in ban­ning exe­cu­tions, rec­og­niz­ing that the American admin­is­tra­tion of death does not func­tion.” The edi­tors not­ed the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s tem­po­rary halt to the exe­cu­tion and point­ed to polit­i­cal pres­sure as a pos­si­ble expla­na­tion for why the Court then allowed it to go for­ward: “[S]everal law­mak­ers threat­ened to impeach the jus­tices, and Gov. Mary Fallin blind­ly ignored the warn­ing signs and ordered the exe­cu­tion to pro­ceed.” The edi­to­r­i­al stat­ed, ​“Mr. Lockett’s ordeal, along with the botched deaths of oth­er inmates around the coun­try, showed there is no reli­able and humane method of exe­cu­tion.” The Times cri­tiqued not only the secre­cy sur­round­ing the source of the lethal injec­tion drugs used, but also the larg­er sys­temic prob­lems of the death penal­ty, such as arbi­trari­ness and wrong­ful con­vic­tions. They cit­ed a new study that found over 4% of death-sen­tenced defen­dants are like­ly inno­cent. Noting the grow­ing num­ber of jurists and law­mak­ers who are call­ing for a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty because of its excep­tion­al cost, the edi­to­r­i­al con­clud­ed, ​“The ​‘excep­tion­al cost’ refers not just to dol­lars and cents. It refers to the moral dimin­ish­ment of the United States when a man dies by the hasty hand of gov­ern­ment, writhing in pain.” Read the edi­to­r­i­al below.

State-Sponsored Horror in Oklahoma

According to an eye­wit­ness account by a reporter for The Tulsa World, Mr. Lockett tried to raise him­self up, mum­bled the word ​“man,” and was in obvi­ous pain. Officials hasti­ly closed the blinds on the cham­ber and told reporters that the exe­cu­tion had been stopped because of a ​“vein fail­ure.” But at 7:06, the inmate was pro­nounced dead of a heart attack.

This hor­rif­ic scene — the very def­i­n­i­tion of cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment — should nev­er have hap­pened. The Oklahoma Supreme Court tried to stop it last week, con­cerned that the state refused to reveal the ori­gin of the dead­ly cock­tail. But sev­er­al law­mak­ers threat­ened to impeach the jus­tices, and Gov. Mary Fallin blind­ly ignored the warn­ing signs and ordered the exe­cu­tion to pro­ceed. (She said it was out­side the juris­dic­tion of the Supreme Court, which nor­mal­ly deals with civil matters.)

On Wednesday after­noon, a few hours after her employ­ees tor­tured a man to death, Ms. Fallin sud­den­ly showed an inter­est in exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures. She ordered an inde­pen­dent review of the injec­tion pro­to­col, halt­ing fur­ther state killings until the inves­ti­ga­tion is complete.

She should have gone much fur­ther and fol­lowed oth­er gov­er­nors and leg­is­la­tures in ban­ning exe­cu­tions, rec­og­niz­ing that the American admin­is­tra­tion of death does not func­tion. Mr. Lockett’s ordeal, along with the botched deaths of oth­er inmates around the coun­try, showed there is no reli­able and humane method of exe­cu­tion. As Gov. John Kitzhaber of Oregon said in 2011: ​“I refuse to be a part of this com­pro­mised and inequitable sys­tem any longer; and I will not allow fur­ther exe­cu­tions while I am governor.”

Seven states have put the death penal­ty on hold over the last five years because of issues of fair­ness or meth­ods; anoth­er 11 states are debat­ing the issue. Even in states where the death penal­ty is applied, the num­ber of exe­cu­tions has fall­en sharply since 2009. Republicans in Oklahoma seemed so eager to buck this tide that they ignored what hap­pened dur­ing a January exe­cu­tion, when an inmate named Michael Lee Wilson said ​“I feel my whole body burn­ing” just before the drugs killed him.

Many drug com­pa­nies, fear­ful of polit­i­cal attack, have stopped sup­ply­ing the means of exe­cu­tion, and states deter­mined to inflict the max­i­mum pun­ish­ment have turned to ques­tion­able sources like com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies for lethal chem­i­cals. Oklahoma, among oth­er states, won’t say where it is get­ting the drugs, lead­ing one state judge to say ​“I do not think this is even a close call” that the exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures are unconstitutional.

The medieval mechan­ics of death, though, are hard­ly the only rea­son that states are aban­don­ing the prac­tice. There is grow­ing evi­dence that cap­i­tal sen­tences are hand­ed out in an arbi­trary and racial­ly biased way, often to inno­cent vic­tims. A new study pub­lished by the National Academy of Sciences esti­mat­ed that more than 4 per­cent of all death-row defen­dants are innocent.

The authors reached that fig­ure by extrap­o­lat­ing from the grow­ing num­ber of exon­er­a­tions of death-row inmates. They accused Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court of mis­cal­cu­lat­ing when he wrote in 2007 that con­vic­tions in American courts have only a 0.027 per­cent error rate. ​“That would be com­fort­ing, if true,” the study says. ​“In fact, the claim is sil­ly.” Even more dis­turb­ing, the report says, is the stark real­i­ty for inno­cent peo­ple sen­tenced to death: most will nev­er be exonerated.

Jurists and law­mak­ers are increas­ing­ly aware that an imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on death is the only civ­i­lized response to this arbi­trary cru­el­ty. As Wallace Carson Jr., the for­mer chief jus­tice of the Oregon Supreme Court, put it recent­ly, ​“the excep­tion­al cost of death penal­ty cas­es and the seem­ing­ly hap­haz­ard selec­tion of which cas­es deserve the death penal­ty out­weigh any per­ceived pub­lic ben­e­fit of this sanction.”

The ​“excep­tion­al cost” refers not just to dol­lars and cents. It refers to the moral dimin­ish­ment of the United States when a man dies by the hasty hand of gov­ern­ment, writhing in pain.

(Editorial, ​“State-Sponsored Horror in Oklahoma,” New York Times, April 30, 2014). See Editorials and Lethal Injection.