Deborah Denno was quoted in a piece in the Oklahoman about the state’s execution process.
Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School and an expert on the death penalty, said this recently to The New York Times: “Over time, lethal injection has become only more problematic and chaotic.”
That certainly describes what’s gone on in Oklahoma of late. Even Gov. Mary Fallin, a staunch proponent of the death penalty, acknowledged last week that the most recent problem associated with an Oklahoma execution “certainly is not helpful to us having the death penalty in Oklahoma.”
Denno’s comments came in a story about the challenges states are facing as they try to carry out the death penalty: Mississippi’s executions are on hold pending a federal lawsuit that challenges the state’s three-drug protocol; Ohio is getting blowback from the Food and Drug Administration for trying to buy one of its execution drugs from overseas; Florida has seen challenges to its use of the sedative midazolam in its executions. There are others.