On October 14 a law­suit was filed by the fam­i­ly of Clayton Lockett (l.) against the state of Oklahoma for dam­ages relat­ed to his botched exe­cu­tion in April. The suit alleges ​“unsound pro­ce­dures and inad­e­quate­ly trained per­son­nel” and claims that Dr. Johnny Zellmer was the physi­cian present at Lockett’s exe­cu­tion. The fam­i­ly asserts that Zellmer, ​“was will­ing to, and did in fact, con­duct the med­ical exper­i­ment engaged in by Defendants to kill Clayton Lockett regard­less of the fact that these chem­i­cals had nev­er been approved or test­ed by any cer­ti­fy­ing body.” Oklahoma law makes the names of its exe­cu­tion team, includ­ing par­tic­i­pat­ing doc­tors, secret. In Lockett’s exe­cu­tion, most of the exe­cu­tion team was out of view of wit­ness­es, but the doc­tor who pro­nounced death was vis­i­ble. Oklahoma has delayed all exe­cu­tions for the remain­der of 2014 in order to allow time to obtain lethal injec­tion drugs and pre­pare per­son­nel. The state revised its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col and remod­eled its exe­cu­tion cham­ber after Lockett’s exe­cu­tion, but retained the con­tro­ver­sial drug mida­zo­lam and secre­cy sur­round­ing the sources of drugs and personnel.

(Z. Branstetter, ​“Lawsuit names McAlester ER physi­cian as exe­cu­tion doc­tor,” Tulsa World, October 14, 2014). See Lethal Injection. Read the Complaint filed by Lockett’s family.

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