Oklahoma: Drugs Injected into Executed Inmates Corpses

By Jeralyn, Section Death Penalty
Posted on Tue Mar 18, 2014 at 06:30:42 PM EST
Tags: death penalty protocol (all tags)

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There's a big fight going on in Oklahoma over the scarcity of execution drugs and the use of substitute drugs. Oklahoma is running short on two of the three drugs in its death cocktail and the Court just delayed two executions set for April.

Katie Fretland, writing in Colorado's The Independent, has an excellent report on this. She also made a FOIA request for Oklahoma records. Among other things, the records she received show executioners had injected leftover drugs into the corpses of the executed inmates to dispose of the drugs.

Convicts executed in Oklahoma have in some cases died from overdoses of pentobarbital or sodium thiopental, the anesthetic, rather than the second and third injections in the three-drug cocktail, according to documents obtained by The Independent. Records show executioners then injected the remaining two drugs into convicts’ dead bodies for what forms turned over in response to an open-records request refer to as “disposal purposes.”

Jerry Massie, the spokesman for the prison system, defended the practice, saying it follows state protocol.

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But Dr. Joe Cohen, a forensic pathologist, said injecting leftover drugs into dead bodies may distort postmortem toxicology results, thereby preventing the public from knowing what an inmate experienced during the execution.

What the overall fight is about:

The scarcity of lethal injection drugs has prompted concerns that states are turning to compounding pharmacies to concoct virtually unregulated lethal injections that may be more painful and slower to take effect than required by the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Oklahoma has bought lethal injection doses using petty cash accounts that allow the state to protect the identity and avoid scrutiny of its suppliers. Officials won’t say who manufactured and sold the drugs used in at least the last 11 executions, or whether the doses are pure enough to meet what the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled is an obligation to carry out the death penalty as humanely as possible.

In January, it botched an execution:

Michael Lee Wilson, after being injected with pentobarbital meant to knock him unconscious, was fully coherent when he said in the execution chamber that “I feel my whole body burning.” The corrections department r