Professor Deborah Denno was quoted in a Washington Post article discussing the use of lethal injections in Oklahoma.
This year, more than two dozen death row inmates filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the state’s three-drug protocol for lethal injections risks causing pain and suffering, which they claim is unconstitutional. The trial, which a judge in August allowed to proceed and halted the men’s executions, is expected to begin in early 2022.
But the judge excluded Grant and five other inmates from the lawsuit because they did not choose a different method of execution. A panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit resolved Wednesday that although the inmates did not check a box specifying which method they would choose, they did specify alternative options.. The court issued Grant and Jones’s stays of execution.
Then in a 5-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court lifted the stays, allowing Grant’s execution to move forward.
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Oklahoma, which was the first to use lethal injections, is highly secretive about the process, Deborah W. Denno, a Fordham University law professor who studies the death penalty, told The Washington Post. Oklahoma officials do not divulge their protocols, the source of the lethal drugs, or how they train their staff, she said.
“They have tried to be at the forefront of different ways of executing people,” Denno added. “It says something about the state, and definitely says something about its department of corrections and its effort to be the first and try new things despite them ending in debacle.”