Uncredited/AP
Update at 8:19 p.m. ET. Execution Fails:
According to reporters tweeting from inside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, the execution of Clayton D. Lockett has failed. Lockett died of a heart attack after the execution was aborted.
The execution of Charles Warner, which was supposed to take place at 9 p.m. ET., was stayed by Corrections Director Robert Patton.
According to the AP reporter on the scene, about 34 minutes after the execution was scheduled to begin, Lockett was still conscious.
“He was lifting [his] head at [7:39 p.m. ET.] and he was still alive and DOC closed [the] curtain and stopped it,” Cary Aspinwall tweets.
Patton told reporters that Lockett’s vein failed during the execution, preventing the chemicals from entering his body. All three drugs, however, were administered.
At 8:06 p.m. ET., more than an hour after the execution was scheduled to begin, Lockett died of a massive heart attack.
In the weeks leading up to the execution, there had been much controversy over the combination of drugs the state was going to use for the execution.
Warner’s attorney, Madeline Cohen, called the proposed execution method “experimental.”
This botched execution follows a controversial one undertaken in Ohio in January. As we reported, when that state executed Dennis McGuire with a new cocktail of drugs, it took 24 minutes for him to die and he gasped for air and made snorting and choking sounds for at least 10 minutes.
Ohio ultimately found that McGuire did not suffer pain.
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SOURCE: NPR – Eyder Peralta
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