Twenty-six years ago, Bill Wiseman draft­ed the first lethal-injec­tion law in U.S. his­to­ry, for­ev­er chang­ing the way most death penal­ty states admin­is­ter exe­cu­tions. He now says that guilt com­pelled him to draft the leg­is­la­tion after vot­ing to rein­state the death penal­ty in Oklahoma despite the fact that he had always been an oppo­nent of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. At the time, Wiseman was a first-term law­mak­er in Oklahoma’s assem­bly, and he knew oppos­ing the state’s 1976 mea­sure to bring back cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment would be polit­i­cal sui­cide. Wiseman recalls, ​“I said, ​‘Oh jeez, I’m going to have to vote for this. I was back and forth on it. You’ve got to under­stand, I just loved being in the leg­is­la­ture.” He notes, ​“It was one of those big moments in my life when I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show what kind of char­ac­ter I had and failed mis­er­ably.” Wiseman is cur­rent­ly an admin­is­tra­tor at the University of Central Oklahoma. (Washington Post, December 7, 2003) See New Voices.

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