Between the 18th and 19th, Clayton Lockett, the condemned man, agonized in front of the prison team of Huntsville, a small town in southeastern Oklahoma. Forty-five minutes of suffering, which highlighted the shortcomings of the methods used by the American States to execute capital punishment, including in the choice of barbiturates used in lethal injection.
So in Oklahoma, Clayton Lockett was sentenced to death in 2000 at 38 years old for the rape and murder of a young woman he had abducted, beaten and buried alive. Despite several calls from this appeal, the capital punishment was scheduled for Tuesday, April 29th. At 6:23 the first product was administered to the prisoner and he was unconscious to 6:33, then the two other injections.
Three minutes later, the man began to move his teeth, breathing hard, and trying to look up. Witnesses indicate, according to the New York Times that the man could utter words “man,” “man.” The condemned man finally died of a heart attack at 7:06.
The first injection, supposed to make the prisoner unconscious, contained a sedative called midazolam. Then came the two lethal injections containing vecuronium bromide, a paralyzing agent that cuts breathing, then potassium chloride, which stops the heartbeat. The New York Times says that without the expected effect of the sedative, the injection of the other two products cause “suffocation and excruciating pain.”
Information websites report that the mixture used Tuesday had only been used once in Florida in 2013, with doses five times higher. Oklahoma State, wishing to remain discreet about the provenance of these products would not have kept track of the transaction related to their purchase.
When asked about the issue, the leaders of the Huntsville prison claimed that all products injected Clayton Lockett had not reached the expiration date and had been legally obtained from licensed pharmacies, validated by the federal state. However, the administration did not disclose the exact source of employees barbiturate medicines. A line of defense is supposed to defuse the controversy, while many have seen in the agony of Clayton Lockett evidence of the failures of States in lethal products.
In 2010, the thirty-two federal states which apply the death penalty has been a revolution. While the lethal injection is now the method used to perform all convicted – though some states offer a second choice to the condemned – the sedative used for executions, sodium thiopental, began to miss. The only manufacturer to have received approval from the US Agency of the drug, Hospira, first announced in September 2010 a stock-out. Then in January 2011, the company explains cease production.
Faced with this shortage, states have been forced to find other products. Most states, including Oklahoma, then turned to pentobarbital, produced notably by Danish firm Lundbeck, the only European laboratory to accept the export of the product to the United States.
This product is usually used to euthanize animals, an administered overdose which replaces the “cocktail of death” consists of three injections. But faced with pressure from critics of the death penalty, the company announced in July 2011 that they do not want their product to be used for the execution of prisoners in the US.
Faced with this new threat of scarcity, some states have tried other products. This was the same case in Missouri where one acquired propofol – the anesthetic which resulted in the death of Michael Jackson for his performances. But the governor was forced to resign in October for lack of evidence of the effectiveness of the injection.
Most states then decided to resort to compounding companies whose products are not licensed by the FDA. By October 2012, these pharmacies delivered anesthetics which were not controlled at national levels. Opacity makes even more controversy at the same time, one of which is blamed for causing health problems to a meningitis epidemic, killing more than sixty dead in twenty States.