Oklahoma reactivated the death penalty this Thursday,
after six years without executing a prisoner
, applying the lethal injection to John Marion Grant, a 60-year-old inmate who convulsed and vomited before dying, thus renewing doubts and criticism about a procedure it should be painless.
Executions in this state came to a standstill in 2015 after a series of errors when giving the lethal injection.
Grant had objected to the procedure precisely because he
feared it would cause him "excruciating pain
,
"
but his allegations were unsuccessful in court.
John Marion Grant in a photo provided by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.
AP
Grant's case, convicted of murdering a prison worker in 1998, came before the Supreme Court, which on Thursday authorized his execution and that of another prisoner, 41-year-old Julius Jones, sentenced for murder during a robbery of a man in 1999 in front of his sister and daughters.
Hours after the court decision, on the same Thursday, Grant received the lethal injection.
The prisoner, who was tied to a stretcher, convulsed and vomited while being administered the first chemical, the sedative midazolam, which was to prepare him to then receive the deadly poison, according to The Associated Press.
Grant's 60-year-old body
shook and shook nearly two dozen times
before he began to vomit on the gurney, journalist Sean Murphy, who watched the execution at Oklahoma State Penitentiary, told a news conference. McAlester.
After several minutes, the protocol officers cleaned his face and neck.
The second and third drugs of the lethal cocktail were applied one minute after it vanished.
The Oklahoma Department of Corrections
considered that this execution was carried out according to the protocols and "without complications,"
according to a statement.
[Death penalty for the Texas nurse who killed four patients in a hospital by injecting air into their arteries]
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Grant had been denied clemency twice.
He was charged with stabbing 58-year-old Gay Carter 16 times with a homemade razor at the prison, where he was serving a 130-year sentence for multiple armed robberies.
The other inmate, Julius Jones, has an execution date of November 18.
Although a clemency hearing scheduled for Tuesday before the Oklahoma Board of Pardons and Paroles is still pending, according to The Washington Post.
The fear of excruciating pain
The Supreme Court allowed the death penalty to be applied by lifting a stay of execution for the two convicted men, which had been issued by a federal court of appeal.
The two inmates had argued that the state's lethal injection protocol, which uses three chemicals, could subject them to excruciating pain, according to The New York Times.
[A second inmate manages to delay his execution in Texas citing "religious freedom reasons"]
The stretcher in the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla (Archive / 2014) .Sue Ogrocki / AP
Furthermore,
they had refused on religious grounds
a requirement imposed by a trial judge that they choose an alternative method of execution, claiming that this would amount to suicide.
The Supreme Court has generally been skeptical of challenges to lethal injection and requires inmates to show that they would be at "substantial risk of severe pain."
In addition, they must propose another way to die.
[People sentenced to death will have to choose between electrocution or execution in South Carolina]
“A prisoner must show a feasible and easily implemented alternative method of execution that would significantly reduce a substantial risk of severe pain and that the State has refused to adopt without a legitimate criminal reason,” Judge Gorsuch wrote in 2019, summarizing previous decisions .
A history of problem executions
Oklahoma has a history of erroneous executions that have generated repudiation.
In 2014, an inmate named Clayton D. Lockett appeared to groan and struggle during an execution that lasted 43 minutes.
Doctors concluded that he had not been fully sedated.
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In 2015, Charles F. Warner was subjected to an 18-minute execution in which officials
mistakenly used the wrong drug to stop his heart
.
That same year, Richard E. Glossip, a death row inmate who challenged the constitutionality of Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol before the Supreme Court, obtained a stay of execution after the state drug supplier sent prison officials the wrong drug.
[Alabama executes a prisoner whom his lawyers considered disabled]
Next month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on a Texas inmate's request that his pastor be allowed to touch him and pray aloud with him in the death chamber.