Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma's Attorney General, this morning announced that the state would be halting all three executions scheduled in Oklahoma this fall, as a result of the drug mixup that was found during the attempt to put Richard Glossip to death yesterday.
Press Release
Thursday, October 1, 2015
AG Pruitt Asks Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to Stay Scheduled Executions
OKLAHOMA CITY – Attorney General Scott Pruitt on Thursday filed a petition with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals seeking an indefinite stay of all scheduled executions. The attorney general also said his office is launching an inquiry into the events surrounding the scheduled execution of Richard Glossip.
“The state owes it to the people of Oklahoma to ensure that, on their behalf, it can properly and lawfully administer the sentence of death imposed by juries for the most heinous crimes. Not until shortly before the scheduled execution did the Department of Corrections notify my office that it did not obtain the necessary drugs to carry out the execution in accordance with the protocol. Until my office knows more about these circumstances and gains confidence that DOC can carry out executions in accordance with the execution protocol, I am asking the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to issue an indefinite stay of all scheduled executions. I am mindful of the families who have suffered an agonizing time through this process, and my heart breaks for them. At least three families have waited a combined 48 years for closure and finality after losing a loved one. Yet, they deserve to know, and all Oklahomans need to know with certainty, that the system is working as intended,” Attorney General Pruitt said.
The attorney general said his office already has begun an inquiry into the events surrounding the scheduled Glossip execution. The attorney general said his office will work quickly to learn more about this issue, but there is no certain timetable as to when the inquiry will conclude.
Click here for a copy of the stay request filed by the attorney general's office.
More below the squiggle.
On Wednesday, it was over an hour after after Glossip's set time of death when the state finally revealed that they had spent the past roughly six hours dealing with a discrepancy in one of the drugs supplied to carry out the execution.
Red Dirt Report was on scene in McAlester, where the state prison is located.
Three o’clock comes and goes and the bus to take the witnesses to the execution chamber has still not arrived. Nobody seems to know anything.
Watkins and Gerszewski leave briefly and return.
Watkins nods to Gerszewski.
“Governor Fallin has granted a 37 day stay of execution,” Gerszewski said. ”We have press releases.”
The press release says something about potassium acetate and the need to determine if it meets the state’s criteria for execution.
This is odd. The life-taker of the three-drug execution cocktail is potassium chloride, chemical formula KCl. It’s a common salt, easily available and harmless unless a strong solution is injected intravenously.
Everyone was full of questions, but there were not many answers provided until Thursday morning, and after a Department of Corrections meeting at 1pm.
Red Dirt Report again:
OKLAHOMA CITY – The drama surrounding the planned execution of death-row inmate Richard E. Glossip took another turn on Thursday as State Attorney General Scott Pruitt announced this afternoon, via a filing in the Court of Criminal Appeals, that the scheduled executions of Glossip and two other death-row inmates be “stayed indefinitely.”
The reason? With Wednesday’s execution stopped at the last minute by Gov. Mary Fallin, and questions regarding the use of potassium acetate, rather than the expected potassium chloride, Pruitt says his office needs time to investigate what happened.
“Due to the events of September 30, 2015, and the imminence of the above-referenced executions, the Office of the Attorney General needs to time to evaluate the events that transpired on September 30, 2015, ODOC’s acquisition of a drug contrary to protocol, and ODOC’s internal procedures relative to the protocol. The State has a strong interest in ensuring that the execution protocol is strictly followed. Therefore, the Office of the Attorney General requests that all three executions be stayed indefinitely.”
In addition to Glossip, Benjamin Cole was scheduled to be executed on October 7th and John Marion Grant was scheduled to be executed on October 28th.
Needless to say,
death penalty opponents in Oklahoma, throughout the US and across the globe are happy at this news. Every such incident harms the perceived fairness, effectiveness and viability of capital punishment among the general public.
But in Richard Glossip's case, this stay gives them the time they have been requesting for months, to further investigate and prove his innocence.
This latest mixup with the drugs is just the latest strange, some would say suspicious, turn in the case that has been taken up by Sister Helen Prejean, noted death penalty abolitionist, and Susan Sarandon, who portrayed her in the film Dead Man Walking, as well as British businessman Richard Branson. Branson took out a full page ad in Tuesday's Daily Oklahoman, the state's largest newspaper. The case has since garnered international attention, and hundreds of thousands of petition signatures and letters and calls to Governor Mary Fallin.
Local media has done a fair enough job covering the Glossip case in the state that is majority pro-death penalty, with notable recognition do to OKC Fox 25's Phil Cross, whose investigation early in September revealed that a box of evidence under the care of the DA had been destroyed before the second trial (the first trial was thrown out for bad representation) and whose existence had been supressed until now.
Glossip's pro bono attorneys now say they will continue to explore every lead for more evidence so that Glossip can have a new, and finally, after 17 years, a fair "day in court."