Effing monsters. According to Oklahoma City's News Channel 4 (KFOR-TV), on Tuesday morning, Clayton Lockett was tased:
5:06 a.m. - The execution process started early Tuesday at about 5 a.m. with x-rays, a routine part of the lethal injection process.
5:50 a.m. – At some point, Lockett became aggressive and officials were forced to restrain him at about 5:50 a.m. with a Taser.
http://kfor.com/...
And here are the crucial sections of what the State of Oklahoma released today as their official timeline of the catastrophe:
http://www.npr.org/...
See those ten minutes at the end, between which time the execution is 'called off', and the condemned is declared dead? Yeah, no mention of attempts to resuscitate. Of course, the blinds were closed, so nobody really knows what was going on inside the death room. And Lockett was declared dead inside the execution chamber, contradicting reports from Tuesday evening that he was on the way to the hospital when he suffered his purported heart attack.
The groin IV insertion point is also cruel and unusual, IMO. As Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show tonight, the location would seem to indicate that they were inserting into Lockett's femoral artery, not a vein - which is a more complicated medical procedure.
What's more, it was protocol to have IV's going into veins of both arms simultaneously. To substitute a single groin entry point is barbaric and disgusting. As you can see in the timeline, they covered Lockett in a sheet to prevent people in the viewing gallery from seeing his crotch. Like that makes this fatal torturing any more decent.