Entries tagged with “Charles Warner”
Executions
Botched Executions
,Oct 26, 2022
10th Circuit Rules That Capital Prisoners Do Not Have a Right to Have Counsel Present Throughout Their Execution
On October 19th, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled against Oklahoma death-row prisoners who had argued that they should be allowed to have their attorney present throughout their execution so that counsel could intervene and file for emergency relief if a problem arose during the execution. The prisoners presented evidence of a rash of botched executions in Oklahoma since 2014. Five of the eight executions performed in Oklahoma since April 2014 have involved…
Issues
Upcoming Executions
,Jul 25, 2022
Former Oklahoma Governor and His Death Penalty Review Commission Co-Chair Call for Execution Halt
Former Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry (pictured) and former U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester, who co-chaired the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission in 2017, have called on state officials to halt the scheduled executions of 25 death-row prisoners. In a guest column in The Oklahoman on July 24, 2022, Gov. Henry, a Democrat, and Lester, a Republican, write that “All Oklahomans, regardless of one’s stance on capital punishment, should insist on an unwavering commitment to fairness and…
Executions
Botched Executions
,Feb 14, 2022
Autopsy Shows John Grant Suffered Pulmonary Edema and Intramuscular Hemorrhage and Aspirated Vomit During Oklahoma Execution
Autopsy results for an Oklahoma death-row prisoner whose execution state officials claimed “was carried out … without complication” have confirmed eyewitness reports that John Grant likely suffered a torturous death. The autopsy, conducted by Tulsa Medical Examiner Jeremy Shelton, M.D., the morning after Grant was executed on October 28, 2021, revealed that Grant suffered pulmonary edema and intramuscular hemorrhaging, and aspirated on his vomit as a result of the lethal injection. The autopsy…
Executions
Feb 10, 2022
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…
Executions
Botched Executions
,Oct 29, 2021
Eyewitnesses Report John Grant Experienced Repeated ‘Full-Body Convulsions’ and Vomited During Execution; Oklahoma Says Execution was Carried Out ‘Without Complication’
Oklahoma’s legacy of botched executions has continued to grow, as media witnesses to the October 28, 2021 execution of John Grant (pictured) reported that Grant suffered repeated convulsions and vomited over a nearly 15-minute period after he was administered the controversial execution drug midazolam. Grant’s execution was Oklahoma’s 113th since executions resumed in the United States in 1977 — tied with Virginia for the second most of any state during that period. It was also the state’s…
Executions
May 07, 2020
Executions Remain On Hold as Federal Litigation on Oklahoma’s ‘Risky and Incomplete’ Lethal-Injection Protocol Moves Forward
Oklahoma will not seek to carry out any executions while litigation continues in federal court on the state’s lethal-injection protocol, a U.S. federal district court judge has announced. At a May 5, 2020 hearing on the Oklahoma death-row prisoners’ execution lawsuit, Judge Stephen Friot (pictured) of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma ordered state officials to disclose details of plans to train corrections officers to carry out executions, setting a June 5 deadline…
Executions
State by State
,Mar 02, 2020
Oklahoma Prisoners Challenge New Execution Protocol in Federal Court
Less than two weeks after Oklahoma officials announced that the state would return to the same controversial three-drug execution protocol implicated in a series of botched executions in 2014 and 2015, the state’s death-row prisoners have asked a federal court to reactivate their lawsuit challenging the state’s execution process. The February 27, 2020 filing in the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma called the new protocol “incomplete” and said it failed to comply…
Executions
Botched Executions
,May 20, 2016
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…
Executions
Botched Executions
,Apr 14, 2016
Oklahoma Knew It Had Used Unauthorized Drug Months Before It Aborted Richard Glossip’s Execution
The Oklahoma Department of Corrections knew it had used an unauthorized drug in the execution of Charles Warner nearly six months before it almost repeated the mistake in the aborted execution of Richard Glossip. Oklahoma executed Warner on January 15, 2015. Documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveal that three months later, in April, the state medical examiner submitted a report to the Department on Warner’s autopsy, showing that he had been executed using potassium acetate, in violation of…