The Execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma Last Night

The New York Times on last night’s “botched” execution:

What was supposed to be the first of two executions here Tuesday night was halted when the prisoner, Clayton D. Lockett, began to writhe and gasp after he had already been declared unconscious and called out “oh man,” according to witnesses.

AP reporter Bailey Elise McBride tweeted it live, although she issued a correction: it was a prison official and not the dying prisoner who said “Something’s wrong” 14 minutes in. VOX explains why Oklahoma would try to execute two men with an untested mix of chemicals:

The state publicly revealed the combination of drugs it would use, but not their origins: an untested combination of three drugs, one of which has never been used in an execution before. State officials would say only that the drugs had been obtained legally from licensed pharmacies and had not expired.

Mary Fallin, the governor of Oklahoma, has ordered “a full review of execution procedures” to see what went wrong in the execution of Clayton Lockett; she’s stayed the execution of Charles Warner for 14 days.

Here’s Mother Jones on more background:

In February, Lockett and Warner prompted a high-profile showdown between Oklahoma officials when they sued the state, asserting that its execution protocol could inflict “severe pain” in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

The two men went into the execution knowing they would be “guinea pigs.” Both men had been convicted of murder; Lockett “shot a teenage girl, then buried her alive, while Warner raped and killed his girlfriend’s 11-month-old daughter in 1997.” From the Guardian on Monday:

At least 4.1% of all defendants sentenced to death in the US in the modern era are innocent.

A majority of Americans still support the death penalty, although the numbers vary widely across demographics; the five countries who have executed the most people are, in order, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the United States.