Oklahoma is Paying Execution Doctor $15,000 Plus Training Fees for Each Execution

Oklahoma is pay­ing $15,000 per exe­cu­tion, plus $1,000 for each day of train­ing, to an unnamed doc­tor to par­tic­i­pate in the process of putting state pris­on­ers to death. Under the agree­ment, the doc­tor stood to receive an esti­mat­ed $130,000 over the course of the 19-week-peri­od between October 28, 2021 and March 10, 2022 in which the state had sched­uled the exe­cu­tions of seven prisoners.

The pay­ments were dis­closed by Oklahoma prison offi­cials dur­ing fed­er­al court hear­ings in January 2022 on motions by Donald Grant and Gilbert Postelle to stay their exe­cu­tions. Grant was exe­cut­ed January 27, 2022 and Postelle’s exe­cu­tion is set for February 17, 2022.

According to The Oklahoman, which first report­ed the pay­ments, Oklahoma Corrections Department oper­a­tions chief Justin Farris recruit­ed the doc­tor in 2021. Farris tes­ti­fied that the doc­tor par­tic­i­pates in ver­i­fy­ing that exe­cu­tion­ers are using the cor­rect three drugs autho­rized in the state’s lethal-injec­tion pro­to­col, plac­ing the intra­venous exe­cu­tion lines, per­form­ing con­scious­ness checks, and ver­i­fy­ing the prisoner’s death. The doc­tor does not admin­is­ter the drugs that kill the prisoner.

Under the terms of the agree­ment, the doc­tor receives a $15,000 fee for each exe­cu­tion, with addi­tion­al pay­ments for par­tic­i­pa­tion in train­ing ses­sions. Farris tes­ti­fied that there is usu­al­ly one train­ing ses­sion per week, with two ses­sions sched­uled dur­ing the week of an exe­cu­tion. Had all sev­en exe­cu­tions sched­uled over the course of the state’s five-month exe­cu­tion spree been car­ried out, the doc­tor stood to receive $105,000 for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the exe­cu­tions, plus $26,000 for train­ing ses­sions, not includ­ing any train­ing in the weeks pre­ced­ing the execution spree. 

Based on Farris’s tes­ti­mo­ny, the doc­tor has received at least $51,000 to date for his involve­ment in the exe­cu­tions of John Grant, Donald Grant, and Bigler Stouffer and train­ing ses­sions the weeks of those exe­cu­tions and will receive anoth­er $17,000 the week of Postelle’s expect­ed exe­cu­tion. He received at least $2,000 for train­ing ses­sions the week Julius Jones was sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed. Jones received a com­mu­ta­tion four hours before his exe­cu­tion was sched­uled to take place and it is unclear if and how much the doc­tor was paid for exe­cu­tion prepa­ra­tions that day. Wade Lay and James Coddington received stays of exe­cu­tion pri­or to the weeks of their scheduled executions.

Media wit­ness­es report­ed that mem­bers of the exe­cu­tion team wiped vom­it from the face of John Grant at least twice dur­ing a botched exe­cu­tion on October 28, 2021 in which Grant expe­ri­enced full-body con­vul­sions over a peri­od of fif­teen min­utes before being declared uncon­scious. The Oklahoman report­ed that prison offi­cials said at the stay of exe­cu­tion hear­ing that the doc­tor and a nurse had entered the exe­cu­tion cham­ber one time to clean Grant’s face of vom­it. The paper report­ed that, accord­ing to the tes­ti­mo­ny, the doc­tor rubbed John Grant’s and Stouffer’s ster­num with his knuck­les to deter­mine if they were uncon­scious, per­formed an eye­lid check on Grant, and shook Stouffer and called his name before declar­ing the pris­on­ers uncon­scious. The hear­ing occurred before Donald Grant’s execution.

In 2015, then Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt con­vened a grand jury to inves­ti­gat­ed the state’s botched exe­cu­tion of Charles Warner using an unau­tho­rized exe­cu­tion drug and its near-exe­cu­tion of Richard Glossip with the same wrong drug. After sev­en months of inves­ti­ga­tion, the grand jury issued a report in May 2016 iden­ti­fy­ing a wide range of con­duct by state offi­cials that it char­ac­ter­ized as ​“neg­li­gent,” ​“care­less,” and in some instances ​“reck­less” devi­a­tions from the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. The grand jury also found that the judg­ment of prison offi­cials through­out the exe­cu­tion process was ​“cloud­ed” by the ​“para­noia” of keep­ing exe­cu­tion infor­ma­tion secret, ​“caus[ing] admin­is­tra­tors to bla­tant­ly vio­late their own policies.”

Oklahoma has con­tin­ued to refuse to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about the sources of the drugs it is using in the exe­cu­tions or the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and train­ing of the per­son­nel who are car­ry­ing them out.

The Ethics of Physician Participation in Executions

In July 2006, the American Medical Association (AMA) issued a state­ment that physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in lethal injec­tion vio­lates med­ical ethics. Then-AMA President William G. Plested III not­ed at the time that physi­cian par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions ​“vio­lates their oath to pro­tect lives and erodes pub­lic con­fi­dence in the medical profession.” 

“A physi­cian is a mem­ber of a pro­fes­sion ded­i­cat­ed to pre­serv­ing life when there is hope of doing so,” the AMA state­ment said. ​“The use of a physician’s clin­i­cal skill and judg­ment for pur­pos­es oth­er than pro­mot­ing an individual’s health and wel­fare under­mines a basic eth­i­cal foun­da­tion of med­i­cine — first, do no harm.”

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics explic­it­ly pro­hibits physi­cian involve­ment in such activ­i­ties as select­ing injec­tion sites, start­ing intra­venous lines, pre­scrib­ing, admin­is­ter­ing, or super­vis­ing the use of lethal drugs, mon­i­tor­ing vital signs, and declaring death.