Deborah Denno comments to PBS NewsHour on the execution of Clayton Locket in Oklahoma — an execution went terribly wrong after the state tried a new, untested combination of drugs in what was supposed to be a lethal injection.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, let me bring in Professor Deborah Denno now joining us. She’s with Fordham University Law School.
What is your understanding of what happened here? What went wrong?
DEBORAH DENNO, Fordham University School of Law: Well, it will be hard to know until they have an independent investigation of what went wrong.
But it seems clear that this is not what was supposed to happen. Most lethal injections take place, if they are done correctly, within about four to five minutes. You are not going to have the writhing that was described or an inmate who is showing signs of conscious awareness, as Mr. Lockett was doing. So, this wasn’t supposed to happen….
JUDY WOODRUFF: Deborah Denno, is there a way to assure that this kind of thing never happens?
DEBORAH DENNO: Well, one way to try to prevent something like this from happening is not having all this secrecy.
It’s pretty clear that this incident should never have happened and probably wouldn’t have happened if the attorneys had been given proper information. I also think it’s very important to separate the actual execution process from the death penalty itself. It’s very clear this Mr. Lockett was guilty of what he did, but nothing should happen like to an inmate as a form of punishment.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you mean when you say if the attorneys had been given more information? Why would that have made a difference?
DEBORAH DENNO: Well, if the attorneys had known the source of drug, they could have seen if the drug had been tested, if the drug had been expired.
These are all very important questions to know whether or not the drug is inhumane. Also, it doesn’t stop there. Who performed this execution? What were their qualifications? All of this is in big veil of secrecy that shouldn’t exist. We should be — it should be a transparent process…
JUDY WOODRUFF: Deborah Denno, do you want to weigh in on that, on what this…
DEBORAH DENNO: Oh, I certainly do.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Go ahead.
DEBORAH DENNO: The three-drug protocol that Mr. Englert worked on in the context of the Baze v. Rees case in 2008 is a very different kind of protocol than was used in Oklahoma.
Since 2008, states have scattered and used all sorts of protocols. We have about 12 different protocols. To equate this protocol, the midazolam, with the kind off protocol that was used in 2008 is — there’s worlds of difference between them.
This was a very problematic protocol that was used in Oklahoma. It was very different than what was used in Kentucky.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Deborah Denno, given now that the governor has, as we have reported, called for an investigation, wants to get to the bottom of what happened, see what the exact protocol was and whether something went wrong, does that satisfy your concerns that this kind of lethal injection could be carried out properly in the future?
DEBORAH DENNO: I really doesn’t.
And I think what we need to do is what the United Kingdom did in the 1950s and have a commission of experts really go over how our lethal injection process is carried out and how our death penalty works. This is just one of a series of problems that have come up. But that wouldn’t be enough.
Read the entire PBS NewsHour transcript.