Oklahoma Announces Plans to Resume Executions by Lethal Injection With Controversial Three-Drug Protocol

After a five-year hia­tus, Oklahoma has announced plans to resume exe­cu­tions by return­ing to the same com­bi­na­tion of lethal-injec­tion drugs that were part of its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col dur­ing a series of botched exe­cu­tions in 2014 and 2015. 

At a February 13, 2020 press con­fer­ence, Governor Kevin Stitt, Attorney General Mike Hunter (pic­tured), and Department of Corrections Director Scott Crow announced that the state will return to a three-drug pro­to­col of mida­zo­lam (a seda­tive), vecuro­ni­um bro­mide (a par­a­lyt­ic), and potas­si­um chlo­ride, which stops the prisoner’s heart. Hunter said the state had found a ​“reli­able source” of exe­cu­tion drugs and revised its old pro­to­col to ​“sim­ply add more checks and bal­ances, more safe­guards to the sys­tem, to ensure that what has hap­pened in the past won’t happen again.”

Executions in Oklahoma have been on hold since 2015, when the state obtained potas­si­um acetate, a chem­i­cal used to de-ice air­plane wings, instead of potas­si­um chlo­ride for the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip. Glossip received a last-minute stay of exe­cu­tion as a result of the error. A report by The Oklahoman lat­er revealed that the state had used potas­si­um acetate in the January 15, 2015 exe­cu­tion of Charles Warner, whose last words were ​“my body is on fire.” The pre­vi­ous exe­cu­tion, that of Clayton Lockett on April 29, 2014, had been grue­some­ly botched. After 16 failed attempts to set an IV line, one of Lockett’s veins explod­ed. Lockett died 45 min­utes into the pro­ce­dure of what was described at the time as a mas­sive heart attack. 

In 2016, a grand jury con­clud­ed sev­en months of inves­ti­ga­tion into Warner’s and Lockett’s exe­cu­tions and Glossip’s near-exe­cu­tion by issu­ing a scathing report that char­ac­ter­ized the state’s actions as ​“neg­li­gent,” ​“care­less” and ​“reck­less.” The report described a litany of fail­ures at near­ly every step of the exe­cu­tion process, find­ing that the judg­ment of prison offi­cials through­out the process had been ​“cloud­ed” by the ​“para­noia” of keep­ing exe­cu­tion information secret. 

The Attorney General’s Office said the updat­ed pro­to­col will include rec­om­men­da­tions from the grand jury report, but Dale Baich, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Oklahoma death-row pris­on­ers in a fed­er­al lethal-injec­tion suit, crit­i­cized the con­tin­u­ing secre­cy in the devel­op­ment of the pro­to­col. ​“The announce­ment today of Oklahoma’s return to its trou­bled three-drug mida­zo­lam pro­to­col should have been accom­pa­nied by a com­mit­ment to com­plete trans­paren­cy and a demon­stra­tion of the efforts the state has tak­en to fix the sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems that have plagued recent exe­cu­tions efforts. But it was not. Instead, Oklahoma offi­cials announced the state will revert to its prob­lem­at­ic mida­zo­lam pro­to­col and pro­vid­ed no assur­ances that the state is pre­pared to car­ry out exe­cu­tions in a man­ner that com­ports with the Constitution.” The secre­cy pro­vi­sions in the pro­to­col itself also remain unchanged.

Other experts crit­i­cized the state’s use of mida­zo­lam, a drug that was also used in the two botched exe­cu­tions in the state. ​“No improve­ment in the pro­to­col will address the fact that mida­zo­lam is an inap­pro­pri­ate drug to use in exe­cu­tions,” said Robert Dunham, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Death Penalty Information Center. ​“Midazolam is not capa­ble of knock­ing some­body out and keep­ing them insen­sate dur­ing the peri­od in which oth­er drugs are administered.”

“Oklahoma’s his­to­ry of mis­takes and malfea­sance reveals a cul­ture of care­less­ness around exe­cu­tions that should give every­one pause,” Baich said.

Oklahoma autho­rized the use of nitro­gen hypox­ia as an alter­na­tive exe­cu­tion method, but state offi­cials did not announce a pro­to­col for that method. Officials said, how­ev­er, that they could not find a man­u­fac­tur­er of a gas deliv­ery device that was will­ing to have their prod­uct used in exe­cu­tions. They also not­ed that the statute allows nitro­gen hypox­ia only if lethal-injec­tion drugs are unavail­able. Officials did not reveal the planned source of lethal-injec­tion drugs. Every major phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­er has stat­ed that they will not know­ing­ly sup­ply drugs for use in exe­cu­tions, so states have turned to secret sources, often com­pound­ing phar­ma­cies, to obtain the drugs.

Midazolam has been a fac­tor in the botched exe­cu­tions of Dennis McGuire in Ohio, Joseph Wood in Arizona, and Ronald Smith in Alabama, as well as in prob­lem­at­ic exe­cu­tions in Arkansas and Virginia. A fed­er­al judge in Ohio likened a sim­i­lar three-drug exe­cu­tion pro­to­col using mida­zo­lam to death by a com­bi­na­tion of water­board­ing, suf­fo­ca­tion, and chem­i­cal fire.