Oklahoma Warden Called Recent Execution a ​“Bloody Mess”

Attorneys for sev­er­al inmates in Oklahoma have asked a fed­er­al court to stay their exe­cu­tions and pre­sent­ed new accounts of the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett (pic­tured) as evi­dence the state’s exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly cru­el. The recent fil­ing includ­ed state­ments describ­ing the exe­cu­tion from the war­den, an attend­ing para­medic, and a vic­tims’ ser­vices advo­cate who wit­nessed the execution. 

Warden Anita Trammell called the exe­cu­tion, ​“a bloody mess,” and said, ​“I was kind of pan­ick­ing. Thinking oh my God. He’s com­ing out of this. It’s not work­ing.” Edith Shoals, a vic­tims’ ser­vices advo­cate for the Department of Corrections, wit­nessed the exe­cu­tion from an over­flow room and said, ​“It was like a hor­ror movie … [Lockett] kept try­ing to talk.” The para­medic who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the exe­cu­tion described the doc­tor’s failed attempts to insert an IV, say­ing, ​“I don’t think he real­ized that he hit the artery and I remem­ber say­ing you’ve got the artery. We’ve got blood everywhere.” 

Lockett was pricked at least 16 times in attempts to insert the IV. The doc­tor declined to set a back­up IV line, as called for in the exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, explain­ing, ​“We had stuck this indi­vid­ual so many times, I didn’t want to try and do another line.” 

Mike Oakley, a for­mer gen­er­al coun­sel for the Department of Corrections, said ​“polit­i­cal pres­sure” played a role in the selec­tion of exe­cu­tion drugs. “[T]he attor­ney general’s office, being an elec­tive office, was under a lot of pres­sure. The, the staff over there was under a lot of pres­sure to, to say, ​‘Get it done,’ you know, and so, yeah, I, I think it was a joint deci­sion but there was, I got to say there was a def­i­nite push to make the deci­sion, get it done, hur­ry up about it.”