Oklahoma's botched execution amounted to "medical experimentation" and torture, says inmate's family

Clayton Lockett's execution by lethal injection for the 1999 murder of 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman in rural Oklahoma did not go well. After being declared unconscious, Lockett grimaced in pain and struggled against his restraints. Eventually, the state drew the blinds on the execution chamber and the wardon called it off. But Lockett died of a heart attack roughly 45 minutes later. 

Lockett's family has filed complaint against various state officiales as well as the doctor who allegedly performed "human medical experimentation in torturing Clayton Lockett to death, in vioalation of the Eighth Amendment." As The Guardian's Ed Pilkington reports: 

The position of doctors is particularly sensitive as physicians take the Hippocratic Oath to show “utmost respect for human life”. Where doctors have been present in the death chamber, their role has in most cases been tightly limited to assessing whether the prisoner is unconscious and then officially pronouncing death.

 

However, in the case of Clayton Lockett, the state has admitted that a physician was present who actively took part in killing the prisoner. The report of the internal investigation into the Lockett execution reveals that the physician stepped in to finish the job after the paramedic who had initiated the execution failed to place the IV into Lockett’s veins.

 

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The investigation report indicated that there had been a shortage of appropriate needles that day, and that the physician and paramedic had failed to place the IV into the prisoner’s vein, leading to the injection of a mass of lethal drugs into his muscle.

This case is noteworthy because the complaint indentified the doctor who placed the IV in Lockett by his name. States usually try to maintain in secrecy the identities of the parties involved. But, Lockett's family claims a First Amendment right to this information. 

Relatedly, Oklahoma announced last week the delay of three executions until next year because of the dearth of needed drugs. It also needs more time to prepare staff for the state's new lethal injection protocols -- and the "larger, remodelled death chamber"-- put into place after Lockett's execution.