On April 29 death row inmate Clayton Lockett was strapped down to a gurney in Oklahoma and administered the lethal injection after officials fumbled and struggled to find a vein into which they could pump the drugs.
The procedure was botched so badly that Lockett died of an apparent heart attack shortly thereafter, when the prison guards stopped the execution and lowered the blinds in the death chamber so the witnesses could no longer view the procedure.
Although the incident sparked outrage across the nation, and in a rare gesture even U.S. President Barack Obama stepped into the controversy describing the treatment of Lockett as “inhumane,” this week, Texas, the state that kills nearly 40 per cent of all U.S. inmates, declared its intention to execute the first prisoner after the Oklahoma crisis.
On Tuesday convicted inmate Robert Campbell was scheduled to be administered the lethal injection, and hopes for a reprieve appeared to be fading after a federal court refused his attorneys’ appeal that given the unknown provenance of the drug used by Texas in its lethal injection he too could suffer the “cruel and unusual punishment” of an agonising death.
Campbell however has two other pending appeals lodged in courts, including one contending that he is mentally impaired and ineligible for execution and another petition before the Supreme Court.
Despite concerns emanating from Oklahoma’s use of a three-drug lethal injection cocktail supplied secretly by unnamed pharmacies Texas correctional officials this week spoke of the “efficiency” of the procedure in their prisons.
