Back in 1999, Clayton Lockett beat and shot 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman before burying her alive. He was finally put to death this April, but his execution went wrong in every conceivable way. He began writhing in pain after being declared unconscious, and remained conscious for almost 45 minutes before dying of a heart attack–an ordeal which triggered a new debate on whether the death penalty is humane. Initial criticism focused on the untested three-drug cocktail that Oklahoma used on Bennett. However, an independent autopsy commissioned by Lockett’s legal team suggests that the real problem may have been a ghastly blunder by the execution team–an improperly-inserted IV line.
The preliminary report from Joseph Cohen, a forensic pathologist based in Novato, California, reveals that the execution team made several attempts to set IVs in Lockett’s arms and both sides of his groin. They ultimately set it in his femoral vein. However, they failed to ensure that it went in all the way. As a result, the IV only nicked the vein, and the drugs went into Lockett’s muscle. While state officials maintained that Lockett’s veins collapsed, this finding appears to be belied by Cohen, who found that Lockett’s veins had “excellent integrity” and could have been easily detected. In other words, they were perfectly healthy, and there was no reason why an IV could not have been set properly.
An investigation by the Tulsa World revealed that an EMT inserted Lockett’s IV. However, we have no way of knowing more about that EMT’s experience due to an Oklahoma law that keeps the qualifications of all medical personnel who take part in executions strictly confidential. Not even Lockett’s attorneys can find out that information; the same law states that those qualifications are “not subject to discovery in any civil or criminal proceedings.” One thing is beyond dispute, though. That EMT made a mistake that would have gotten him or her suspended or fired had it happened to a non-inmate.
In the aftermath of Lockett’s execution, much of the scrutiny centered around the cocktail Oklahoma adopted for executions. The state was left scrambling for a replacement after? growing consensus among European and Asian drugmakers that the death penalty is inhumane left it unable to replenish its supply of sodium thiopental, the anesthetic long used in the United States for lethal injections. However, several medical experts have stated that the first drug in Oklahoma’s replacement cocktail, midazolam, is not a true anesthetic and will thus not render an inmate unconscious. This is significant, because the federal Supreme Court held unambiguously in Baze v. Rees that if if the first drug in an execution cocktail doesn’t render the inmate unconscious, there is a “substantial, constitutionally unacceptable risk” of suffocation and pain. And yet, according to the World, Oklahoma State Penitentiary warden Anita Trammell not only signed off on its use without consulting any experts in the field, but called it an anesthetic.
But based on Cohen’s autopsy, this execution would have been botched regardless of what was in that cocktail. And it may be a symptom of a larger problem–according to a study by Amherst College law professor Austin Sarat, botched executions have actually become more common since lethal injection have become the preferred method of execution. Sarat concluded that despite our best efforts, we still haven’t found an execution method that doesn’t raise substantial risk of “violating our most important moral and constitutional commitments.” And all available evidence suggests that the reason we haven’t found a method is that we’ve spent 238 years trying to humanize something that is inherently inhumane.
Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
