Torture

Some background–due to the recent shortage of drugs used for executions, Oklahoma, like many states has turned to so called “compounding pharmacies” for their lethal cocktail.  In some cases, those pharmacies have been exposed to bad press, causing them to stop producing the drugs.  In Oklahoma, the state Legislature, perhaps the only body with more assholes, percentage-wise than the US House of Representatives, passed a law denying the release of the names of any organization that produces the three drug cocktail for the state, in blatant disregard for the state Constitution and the Oklahoma Open Records Act.

Both Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner were scheduled to be executed tonight after their recent appeals to the State Supreme Court were vacated by that body.  In Oklahoma, we have essentially two high courts, the OK Court of Criminal Appeals, packed with conservatives, and the OK State Supreme Court (which is titularly superior), packed with moderates and what passes for liberals in this state.  Clayton and Lockett sued the state Department of Corrections to learn the name of the compounding pharmacy that had produced the execution drug mixture.  The Court of Criminal Appeals turned down the appeal on the grounds that they didn’t have jurisdiction, it being, in the Court’s opinion, a civil matter.  Lockett and Warner then appealed to the OK State Supreme Court, which issued a stay of execution and instructed the Court of Criminal Appeals to hear and act on the motion.  That’s when things got crazy.

Governor Mary Fallin (R, Of Course) declared:

that the executive branch would not honor the judicial stay preventing the executions. The Supreme Court’s “attempted stay of execution is outside the constitutional authority of that body,” she declared, so “I cannot give effect to the order by that honorable court.”

Gov. Fallin then said she would recognize only the power of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to guide her in proceeding with the execution of one of the prisoners, Clayton Lockett, on April 29. In other words, the head of the executive branch of state government had just proclaimed that she would not recognize a duly issued order by the state Supreme Court because she did not agree with it and because the other high court in the state, which did not favor a stay of execution to fully evaluate the injection secrecy issues, stood ready to implement her will.

Then a week ago, whackjob state Representative Mike Christian introduced articles of impeachment in the state House against the five members of the OK State Supreme Court who voted for the stay.

And that’s when the Oklahoma Supreme Court simply, tragically, caved in to the political pressure.

On Wednesday, just two days after it had issued its stay, the five justices responsible for that stay declared that the injection secrecy law was, in fact, constitutional. Never mind, these justices suddenly said after weeks of litigation in which they had expressed doubts about the constitutionality of the secrecy law — the executions may now proceed.

And proceed they one of them did.  Until they fucked it up.  I don’t know if the three-drug cocktail was not mixed right, if it was administered incorrectly, or if it was just  incompetence in the rush to kill the guy before a court that wasn’t afraid of Mary Fallin and Mike Christian could weigh in, but it’s pretty obvious that the state failed in its constitutional duty to avoid cruel and unusual punishment.

According to Wikipedia:

In most states, the intravenous injection is a series of drugs given in a set sequence, designed to first induce unconsciousness followed by death through paralysis of respiratory muscles and/or bycardiac arrest through depolarization of cardiac muscle cells. The execution of the condemned in most states involves three separate injections (in sequential order):

1. Sodium thiopental or pentobarbital:^[14] ultra-short action barbiturate, an anesthetic agent used at a high dose that renders the prisoner unconscious in less than 30 seconds. Depression of respiratory activity is one of the characteristic actions of this drug.^[15] Consequently, the lethal-injection doses, as described in the Sodium Thiopental section below, will — even in the absence of the following two drugs — cause death due to lack of breathing, as happens with overdoses of opioids.
2. Pancuronium bromide: non-depolarizing muscle relaxant, causes complete, fast and sustained paralysis of the skeletal striated muscles, including the diaphragm and the rest of the respiratory muscles; this would eventually cause death by asphyxiation.
3. Potassium chloride: stops the heart, and thus causes death by cardiac arrest.

The drugs are not mixed externally as that can cause them to precipitate. Also, a sequential injection is key to achieve the desired effects in the appropriate order: administration of the pentobarbital essentially renders the inmate unconscious; the infusion of the pancuronium bromide induces complete paralysis, including that of the lungs and diaphragm rendering the inmate unable to breathe. If the condemned were not already completely unconscious, the injection of a highly concentrated solution of potassium chloride could cause severe pain at the site of the IV line as well as along the punctured vein, but it interrupts the electrical activity of the heart muscle and causes it to stop beating, bringing about the death of the inmate

Charles Warner, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence since his arrest, gets two more weeks to contemplate what’s in store for him, while Murderous Mary and her merry band of psychopaths  try to figure out how to kill a man without rousing the ire of the Federal Court system.  Of course, with the current make up of the US Supreme Court, his own fate is all but certain, and if the State Supreme Court with their feet of clay can just decide that due process and constitutional rights are now optional, I don’t hold much hope for Mr. Warner to receive justice from the five similarly inclined members of the SCOTUS.