Oklahoma Grand Jury Issues Report Detailing ​“Blatant Violations” of the State’s Execution Protocol

Following sev­en months of inves­ti­ga­tion into the caus­es of Oklahoma​’s botched exe­cu­tion of Charles Warner using an unau­tho­rized exe­cu­tion drug and its near-exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip with the same wrong drug, an Oklahoma grand jury issued a report on May 19 iden­ti­fy­ing a wide range of what it char­ac­ter­ized as ​“neg­li­gent,” ​“care­less,” and in some instances ​“reck­less” con­duct by state offi­cials that devi­at­ed from the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. The state’s three-drug exe­cu­tion pro­to­col called for the use of potas­si­um chlo­ride as the final drug to stop the pris­on­er’s heart, but instead the state obtained the unau­tho­rized drug, potassium acetate. 

The grand jury described a litany of errors or impro­pri­eties at vir­tu­al­ly every stage of the exe­cu­tion process by vir­tu­al­ly every­one who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the process. It found that Robert Patton, who sub­se­quent­ly retired from his posi­tion as Director of the Department of Corrections had ​“oral­ly mod­i­fied the exe­cu­tion pro­to­col with­out author­i­ty”; the anony­mous phar­ma­cist select­ed by the state had ​“ordered the wrong exe­cu­tion drugs”; the DoC’s General Counsel ​“failed to inven­to­ry the exe­cu­tion drugs” upon recept from the phar­ma­cist; the agent of the DoC’s Office of Inspector General ​“failed to inspect the exe­cu­tion drugs while trans­port­ing them”; Warden Anita Trammell, who over­saw the prison where the exe­cu­tions occurred and also retired in the wake of the exe­cu­tion scandal,“failed to noti­fy any­one in the [DoC] that [the wrong drug] had been received”; oth­er prison admin­is­tra­tors and mem­bers of the exe­cu­tion IV team ​“failed to observe the Department had received the wrong drugs”; and that the Governor’s for­mer General Counsel, Steve Mullins, ​“advo­cat­ed the Department pro­ceed with the Glossip exe­cu­tion using potas­si­um acetate” even though he knew its use was not autho­rized by the exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. Mullins insist­ed that the drug was inter­change­able with potas­si­um chlo­ride, telling the assis­tant attor­ney gen­er­al to ​“Google it.” 

“It is unac­cept­able for the Governor’s General Counsel to so flip­pant­ly and reck­less­ly dis­re­gard the writ­ten Protocol and the rights of Richard Glossip,” the grand jury wrote. ​“Given the grav­i­ty of the death penal­ty, as well as the nation­al scruti­ny fol­low­ing the [botched Clayton] Lockett exe­cu­tion, the Governor’s Counsel should have been unwill­ing to take such chances.” The grand jury also found that the judg­ment of prison offi­cials through­out the process was ​“cloud­ed” by the ​“para­noia” of keep­ing exe­cu­tion infor­ma­tion secret, ​“caus[ing] admin­is­tra­tors to bla­tant­ly vio­late their own policies.”

The grand jury was con­vened in October 2015 after the state issued a last-minute stay of exe­cu­tion to Richard Glossip. A week after Glossip’s exe­cu­tion was halt­ed, an inves­ti­ga­tion by The Oklahoman revealed that the same incor­rect drug had been used in the January 2015 exe­cu­tion of Charles Warner, a fact that state offi­cials had notice of for months. 

Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who con­vened the grand jury, said, ​“a num­ber of indi­vid­u­als respon­si­ble for car­ry­ing out the exe­cu­tion process were care­less, cav­a­lier and in some cir­cum­stances dis­mis­sive of estab­lished pro­ce­dures that were intend­ed to guard against the very mis­takes that occurred,” although he expressed con­fi­dence that changes to the exe­cu­tion pro­to­col rec­om­mend­ed by the grand jury would ​“be imple­ment­ed with dili­gence and dispatch.” 

Dale Baich, co-coun­sel for a group of Oklahoma pris­on­ers who are chal­leng­ing the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dure, said, ​“As the state con­tin­ues to alter its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, more scruti­ny is need­ed before exper­i­men­tal pro­ce­dures are car­ried out in exe­cu­tion cham­bers. More trans­paren­cy is need­ed as well as account­abil­i­ty for a pat­tern of seri­ous mis­takes in the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty in the state.”