State of Oklahoma Struggling to Find Drugs for Execution of Clayton Lockett
The state of Oklahoma is scrambling to find the drugs necessary to carry out the execution of Clayton Lockett, which is scheduled for Thursday. The state has said it will do its best to find a drug that will put Lockett to death but may not be the typical course of execution.
"This has been nothing short of a Herculean effort, undertaken with the sole objective of carrying out ODOC's duty under Oklahoma law to conduct Appellants' executions," Assistant Attorney General Seth Branham said in a letter to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals filed yesterday. "Sadly, this effort has (so far) been unsuccessful."
So far the state has failed to obtain pentobarbital and vecuronium bromide from a pharmacy but is still looking for some form of combination to carry out the execution. The state could legally use electrocution or the firing squad, but only if lethal injection is deemed unconstitutional. Since the only thing holding up the execution is a lack of drugs, that rules out switching to electrocution or firing squad.
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"It's stunning news to us that the state does not have the means to carry out a legal execution right now, and it gives us deep cause for concern that they are coupling that revelation with an insistence on shrouding the process in secrecy," public defender Madeline Cohen told the Associated Press.
Lockett and another prisoner scheduled to be executed next week, Charles Warner, have asked for a delay in their executions in order to learn more about the drugs that will be used to kill them. They fear they could suffer unnecessary harm if given an untested drug.
"At this point, it's premature to discuss the next steps in the process. The attorney general's office is exhausting all available options to ensure the punishment for this heinous crime is carried out," Aaron Cooper, a spokesman for the attorney general's office told the AP.
