Deborah Denno comments to NPR on the botched execution of death row inmate Clayton Lockett on Tuesday in Oklahoma and how it is sparking a reassessment of lethal injection.
In 2009, an EMT in Ohio jabbed Rommell Broom with a needle 18 times trying to establish access. His execution was eventually postponed: He walked out of the death chamber alive. At that time, Deborah Denno, a professor of law at Fordham University, told me Broom’s execution was ‘the worst botched execution that has happened in the history of this country.’ “
“Lockett’s execution might have surpassed it. In all likelihood, the executioner who inserted Lockett’s IV — and, in Oklahoma, an IV is inserted into both arms — missed the veins or went right through them. After this likely mistake, the state, according to the protocol, would have had ‘three persons to administer lethal agents’ — that is, to push the drugs through the IV line. A medical professional might have been able to recognize, based on the level of resistance, that the IV line was not flowing properly into Lockett’s vein. However, the Oklahoma protocol requires no medical training at all on behalf of these ‘three persons.’ These ‘three persons’ also could have ruptured Lockett’s blown vein further by applying too much pressure to the plunger. (It’s impossible to know who these people were. ‘The identities of the persons selected as executioners shall not be disclosed,’ the protocol says.)”
Read the entire NPR story.