The Tulsa World of Oklahoma recent­ly con­duct­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion into the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col in the wake of the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett in April. Comparing Oklahoma’s pro­to­col to those of 19 oth­er states, the study found that Oklahoma lacks basic safe­guards fol­lowed in many oth­er states. Among those are reg­u­lar train­ing for the exe­cu­tion team, the avail­abil­i­ty of back­up drugs in the event of a prob­lem with the ini­tial injec­tion, and spec­i­fied pro­ce­dures for deter­min­ing whether the inmate is uncon­scious. The World ques­tioned Oklahoma’s deci­sion to use a three-drug pro­to­col when a less error-prone, one-drug pro­to­col was avail­able under the state’s pro­ce­dures. A review of autop­sy records from Oklahoma’s exe­cut­ed inmates found that all inmates were giv­en the same dose of the drugs, regard­less of their weight. At least 32 of the 108 inmates for whom records were avail­able had lev­els of anes­thet­ic in their blood below what experts say would ren­der a patient uncon­scious. In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court said it was ​“uncon­test­ed” that, with­out suf­fi­cient anes­the­sia, ​“there is a sub­stan­tial, con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unac­cept­able risk of suf­fo­ca­tion” from the sec­ond and third drugs used in lethal injec­tions. A state law passed in 2000 end­ed the prac­tice of auto­mat­ic autop­sies of exe­cut­ed pris­on­ers. Autopsies are now per­formed only if request­ed by the inmate’s fam­i­ly or ordered by state offi­cials. An autop­sy of Clayton Lockett was ordered, but the full results have not yet been released.

(Z. Branstetter and C. Aspinwall, ​“Lethal lessons: State’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dures fall short, World review finds” and ​“State fails to autop­sy most inmates,” Tulsa World (sub­scrip.), June 23 and 24, 2014). See Lethal Injection and Studies.

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