Lawyer says Oklahoma can’t be trusted on executions

Oklahoma’s governor says no executions will take place in the state until she has “complete confidence” in the system as it comes to light that a previous execution reportedly was carried out against protocol.

January 15, 2015: Oklahoma executed Warner for the 1997 killing of his roommate’s infant daughter.

But now it has been discovered officials used potassium acetate – not potassium chloride, as required under state protocol – on an inmate previously.

“We can not trust Oklahoma to get it right or to tell the truth”, Dale Baich, an attorney representing inmates on death row said in a statement.

Baich says attorneys will explore the issue in its ongoing federal lawsuit. “Out of respect for that inquiry we will not making any comment at this time”.

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.

“As an act of precaution, the attorney general and I chose to stop the execution”.

Prison officials in Texas and Virginia have improvised a short-term solution by trading drugs for lethal injections. The execution was called off but he died about 45 minutes after it started because lethal injection chemicals had accumulated in his tissue.

Potassium acetate is the same drug that was mistakenly received by officials last week for the execution of Richard Glossip, which led to a last-minute stay by Gov. Mary Fallin.

But later, she restated those events during Glossip’s near-execution at a press conference Thursday.

Potassium chloride, which stops the heart, is the final drug in the state’s three-drug protocol, following the application of a sedative, midazolam; and a paralytic, rocuronium bromide, which prevents normal breathing.

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

The two different types of potassium appear to be equal, said David Gortler, an associate professor of pharmacology at Yale University and a drug safety expert.

Her executive order said the stay was granted to allow time to check on the viability of the substitute drug, “and/or obtain potassium chloride” – the drug called for in the protocol.

Robert Bachman, a chemistry professor at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, told the AP that failing to adjust the dosage to account for the difference between chloride and acetate could make the potassium less effective. Lockett died 43 minutes after being given the first in a series of execution drugs, the Guardian reported.

According to the AP, Oklahoma’s execution protocol does allow for a few wiggle room in the kind of drugs used in executions. He maintained his innocence through two trials, and his attorneys recently introduced new evidence they say indicates that Justin Sneed, who he allegedly hired to kill the manager of the motel where they both worked, acted alone.

A medical examiner said the products used for Warner’s execution included 12 empty vials labelled “single dose Potassium Acetate Injection”.