Execution method review: Federal appeals court halts executions in Oklahoma

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Photo: AP / dpa

The day before inmate John Marion Grant was about to die by injection of poison, the US appeals court stopped his execution.

The execution of Julius Jones on November 18 has also been suspended for the time being.

The court ruled that Oklahoma District Judge Stephen Friot made a mistake in dismissing Grant, Jones, and three other inmates from federal prosecutions.

The lawsuit is directed against the state's protocols, which do not provide for an alternative method of execution other than the lethal injection of three drugs.

The court found that the inmates had named alternative methods in their complaint, even though they had not specifically ticked which method they wanted to see used on another form.

The panel wrote: “We find nothing in relevant case law requiring a prisoner to indicate by checking a box a method of execution to be used in his case when the prisoner has already named the same alternative methods in his complaint, which are given as options on the form. "

Tortured executions by poison cocktail

Oklahoma has one of the most haunted death chambers in the nation, but has not carried out any executions in six years.

Three botched attempts ended in the death of Charles Frederick Warner in 2015.

Warner, who was convicted of the rape and murder of an 11-month-old baby, was executed on the wrong drug, the authorities later announced.

The drug mix-ups followed a botched execution in April 2014 in which inmate Clayton Lockett suffered on a stretcher before dying 43 minutes after the fatal injection.

During the moratorium, Oklahoma planned to use nitrogen gas to execute inmates, but eventually abandoned the idea and announced last year that it would resume executions with the same three-drug protocol that was used in the flawed executions.

The three drugs are

• Midazolam

  , a sedative

• Vecuronium bromide

  , a muscle relaxer

• and

  potassium chloride

  , which stops the heart.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 36 states and the District of Columbia have either abolished the death penalty or have not carried out any executions in the past 10 years.

kim / AP / Reuters