Eyewitnesses Report John Grant Experienced Repeated ​‘Full-Body Convulsions’ and Vomited During Execution; Oklahoma Says Execution was Carried Out ​‘Without Complication’

Oklahoma​’s lega­cy of botched exe­cu­tions has con­tin­ued to grow, as media wit­ness­es to the October 28, 2021 exe­cu­tion of John Grant (pic­tured) report­ed that Grant suf­fered repeat­ed con­vul­sions and vom­it­ed over a near­ly 15-minute peri­od after he was admin­is­tered the con­tro­ver­sial exe­cu­tion drug midazolam. 

Grant’s exe­cu­tion was Oklahoma’s 113^th since exe­cu­tions resumed in the United States in 1977 — tied with Virginia for the sec­ond most of any state dur­ing that peri­od. It was also the state’s first exe­cu­tion since botch­ing the exe­cu­tions of Clayton Lockett in April 2014 and Charles Warner in January 2015 and then abort­ing the exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip in September 2015.

Media wit­ness Sean Murphy of the Associated Press report­ed in the post-exe­cu­tion news con­fer­ence that Grant began con­vuls­ing almost imme­di­ate­ly after the mida­zo­lam was inject­ed into his body. After being admin­is­tered “[t]he first drug — the mida­zo­lam — he exhaled deeply, he began con­vuls­ing about two dozen times — full-body con­vul­sions,” Murphy said. ​“Then he began to vom­it, which cov­ered his face, then began to run down his neck and the side of his face.”

After prison per­son­nel wiped the sick off Grant’s face and neck, he began to con­vulse again and again vom­it­ed, Murphy said.

Oklahoma City Fox tele­vi­sion anchor Dan Snyder cor­rob­o­rat­ed Murphy’s account. ​“Almost imme­di­ate­ly after the drug was admin­is­tered, Grant began con­vuls­ing, so much so that his entire upper back repeat­ed­ly lift­ed off the gur­ney,” Snyder report­ed. ​“As the con­vul­sions con­tin­ued, Grant then began to vom­it. Multiple times over the course of the next few min­utes med­ical staff entered the death cham­ber to wipe away and remove vom­it from the still-breath­ing Grant,” Snyder wrote in his minute-by-minute account of the execution.

About 15 min­utes into the exe­cu­tion, the media wit­ness­es said, prison per­son­nel declared Grant uncon­scious and the sec­ond and third drugs in Oklahoma’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col — the par­a­lyt­ic drug vecuro­ni­um bro­mide and potas­si­um chlo­ride, which induces heart fail­ure — were admin­is­tered. He was pro­nounced dead six min­utes lat­er at 4:21 p.m. Central time.

Prison offi­cials ini­tial­ly ignored the evi­dence of an exe­cu­tion gone wrong, issu­ing a state­ment from com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor Justin Wolf that ​“Inmate Grant’s exe­cu­tion was car­ried out in accor­dance with Oklahoma Department of Corrections’ pro­to­cols and without complication.” 

In a news con­fer­ence one day after the exe­cu­tion, ODOC Director Scott Crow called the eye­wit­ness accounts of the exe­cu­tion ​“embell­ished,” describ­ing the con­vul­sions report­ed by mul­ti­ple wit­ness­es as ​“dry heaves” and Grant’s vom­it­ing as ​“regur­gi­ta­tion.”

Snyder respond­ed blunt­ly to ODOC’s san­i­tized descrip­tion of the exe­cu­tion. ​“As a wit­ness to the exe­cu­tion who was in the room, I’ll say this: repeat­ed con­vul­sions and exten­sive vom­it­ing for near­ly 15 min­utes would not seem to be ​‘with­out com­pli­ca­tion,’” he tweet­ed.

Advocates and law reform­ers called on Oklahoma to halt the six remain­ing sched­uled exe­cu­tions. Assistant fed­er­al defend­er Dale Baich, who is one of the lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the state’s death-row pris­on­ers in their con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to Oklahoma’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, said that, “[b]ased on the report­ing of the eye­wit­ness­es to the exe­cu­tion, for the third time in a row, Oklahoma’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col did not work as it was designed to.”

“This is why the Tenth Circuit stayed John Grant’s exe­cu­tion and this is why the U.S. Supreme Court should not have lift­ed the stay. There should be no more exe­cu­tions in Oklahoma until we go [to] tri­al in February to address the state’s prob­lem­at­ic lethal injec­tion pro­to­col,” Baich said.

Oklahoma City University law pro­fes­sor Maria Kolar, who served on the bipar­ti­san Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission that rec­om­mend­ed reforms to the state’s death penal­ty, told NBC News that the state’s rush to car­ry out exe­cu­tions before the February 2022 tri­al on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of its exe­cu­tion method was rem­i­nis­cent of the mind­set that led to Lockett’s botched execution.

“This time reminds me of the last time,” Kolar said. “[T]he atti­tude of, ​‘You can’t stop us, we’re going ahead. Even if they’re not made to wait, the state should wait and respect the process.”

Oklahoma had not attempt­ed to car­ry out an exe­cu­tion since September 30, 2015, when then-Governor Mary Fallin at the last minute called off Richard Glossip’s exe­cu­tion after being informed that ODOC had received the wrong drug, potas­si­um acetate, instead of the potas­si­um chlo­ride required as the third drug in the state’s lethal-injection protocol. 

It was lat­er revealed that the state had known for months that it had obtained and used the same unau­tho­rized drug to exe­cute Charles Warner in January 2015. Media wit­ness­es report­ed that Warner had said dur­ing his exe­cu­tion, ​“It feels like acid,” and ​“My body is on fire.” 

Oklahoma also botched the exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in April 2014, fail­ing for 51 min­utes to set an intra­venous exe­cu­tion line and then mis­plac­ing the line in Lockett’s groin, inject­ing the drugs into the sur­round­ing sub­cu­ta­neous tis­sue. With Lockett writhing on the gur­ney in a pool of blood, the exe­cu­tion was called off but 43 min­utes after the drugs were first admin­is­tered, he died. 

“We keep hav­ing prob­lems with exe­cu­tions here,” Abraham Bonowitz, the Director of Death Penalty Action, said after Grant’s exe­cu­tion. ​“The whole idea that Oklahoma can’t seem to get it right, you know, should be a wake up call.”

In a press state­ment issued two days before Grant’s exe­cu­tion, ODOC said that it was pre­pared to resume exe­cu­tions “[a]fter invest­ing sig­nif­i­cant hours into review­ing poli­cies and prac­tices to ensure that exe­cu­tions are han­dled humane­ly, effi­cient­ly, and in accor­dance with state statute and court rul­ings.” ODOC said that it ​“con­tin­ues to use the approved three drug pro­to­col which has proven humane and effec­tive. … Extensive val­i­da­tions and redun­dan­cies have been imple­ment­ed since the last exe­cu­tion in order to ensure that the process works as intended.”

After Grant’s exe­cu­tion, Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham issued a state­ment that ​“to say this is anoth­er botched Oklahoma exe­cu­tion would be inad­e­quate. Oklahoma knew full well that this was well with­in the realm of pos­si­ble out­comes in a mida­zo­lam exe­cu­tion. It didn’t care … and the Supreme Court appar­ent­ly didn’t either.”

In his October 29 news con­fer­ence, prison direc­tor Crow said that Oklahoma did not intend to change its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col or pro­ce­dures as a result of Grant’s execution.