Oklahoma used wrong drug in January execution

Last week, Gov. Mary Fallin issued a last-minute stay of execution for inmate Richard Glossip after officials discovered that potassium acetate had been delivered.

Benjamin Cole was initially scheduled for execution Wednesday, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals halted all upcoming executions as the state investigates why the wrong lethal injection drug was sent in a different case.

The autopsy says the items used in Warner’s execution included 12 empty vials labeled “single dose Potassium Acetate Injection”.

“I was not aware nor was anyone in my office aware of that possibility until the day of Richard Glossip’s scheduled execution”, said Fallin.

Weintz said the governor wanted to hire an independent legal counsel who had no involvement in any of Oklahoma’s recent executions.

After problems arose with executions of two Oklahoma death row inmates, Gov. Mary Fallin has hired an outside attorney to give her legal advice on the state’s execution protocols.

Oklahoma botched an execution previous year that prompted an independent investigation and an overhaul of the state’s execution protocols.

Glossip’s attorney, Dale Baich, said in a statement that Oklahoma can not be trusted to get this procedure right. “The protocols also allow for rocuronium or pancuronium bromide to be substituted for the second drug”.

Oklahoma has one of the busiest death chambers in the country – its 112 executions trail only Texas’ 529 since the U.S. Supreme Court reauthorized the death penalty in 1976, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes executions.

All Oklahoma executions are on hold at the request of Attorney General Scott Pruitt, as the state investigates why the Department of Corrections received potassium acetate, rather than potassium chloride, for its planned execution last week of Richard Glossip. “We will explore this in detail through the discovery process in the federal litigation”.

Potassium chloride, which stops the heart, is the final drug in the state’s protocol following a sedative and paralytic.

Of course, this case again points to the issues surrounding how and where states are getting their execution drugs. The supplier is being kept confidential under state law. Oklahoma and other states have struggled to adjust to new combinations of execution drugs after manufacturers, under pressure from critics of capital punishment, ceased providing states with drugs they had long used.

November 6, 2012: Garry Allen was executed on the day of the 2012 general election despite his attorneys’ claims that their client was insane. According to reports, he said “my body is on fire”, after receiving the first drug, a sedative called midazolam, but did not show any subsequent distress.