Oklahoma executions reveal secrecy, inhumanity

19th May 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Andrew Scot Bolsinger
Contributing Writer

(TriceEdneyWire.com) — The state of the flawed state of executions in America was by no means a secret, but it took a botched attempt in front of a tweeting reporter and witnesses to bring the true depth of this problem into the public eye.

Though Oklahoma prison officials tried to pull the curtain to block the view of those watching a man who was supposed to be killed quickly and humanely as required by the law quiver, shake and try to speak, the truth of the situation can’t be hidden following the botched execution April 29. The secret drugs don’t work, the process is broken and people are dying grisly deaths right here in America.

What’s worse is many saw this coming, including a death row inmate Reggie Clemons, interviewed weeks before the death of Clayton D. Lockett.

Oklahoma has ramped up its killing machines in recent years. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the state has executed 14 inmates in the last three years, more than any other state than Texas. Those statistics will forever now have an asterisk by it for 2014 following the execution of Lockett. Does he count now as number 15? He didn’t technically die by execution. He died much later in a nearby hospital where doctors tried to save his life from the unknown chemicals pumped into his system. He died of a heart attack brought on by the actions of the Oklahoma Depart­ment of Corrections that were so flawed it tortured him but did not kill him.

The Lockett execution had already been delayed briefly over the drugs being used.

Prior to the execution the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that two death row inmates are not entitled to know the source of the drugs that will be used to kill them. The court also lifted a stay of execution that it had granted earlier in the week. According to published reports the back and forth court battle placed Oklahoma’s two highest courts at odds and prompted calls for impeaching justices on the Supreme Court.

In this highly politicized mess, Oklahoma pushed ahead its plans to execute two prisoners on the same day. While Charles Warner, who has maintained his innocence, awaited his turn in what he thought was the final hours of his life, Lockett lay squirming on the execution table.

According to the AP reporter on the scene, about 34 minutes after the execution was scheduled to begin, Lockett was still conscious, NPR reported.

“He was lifting [his] head at [7:39 p.m. ET] and he was still alive and DOC closed [the] curtain and stopped it,” reporter Cary Aspinwall tweeted.

Death Row Perspective

News of the botched execution spread quickly through death row, according to Missouri death row inmate, Reggie Clemons, who said it was the center of conversation.

“I think people here are mostly numb because of the executions that had started up here again” Clemons said. “A lot of people were hoping that there wouldn’t be any more executions in the state of Missouri. It’s an emotional shock for people who were beginning to experience the executions of those who they came to know.”

Before Oklahoma’s botched execution Clemons has spoken out. In an April interview, Clemons pre-empted questions to draw attention to the status of Oklahoma’s death penalty ruling. He noted that Missouri has the same laws that conceal the drugs it uses to administer lethal injection. Oklahoma also concealed the drugs used in its botched execution attempt.

“The thing that is scary to me — and that’s one of the reasons there is a petition out there called ‘Capital Consequences’ in memory of Rachel King. The petition is attempting to challenge the legality of the death penalty in its practice and implementation. And what this lethal injection really is – is that in order to continue executing people they are hiding what’s involved and what the practices are. Imagine if other areas of government start to do that, like a police, where they don’t have to tell you what they do. It’s a dangerous precedent their trying to set,” he told me.

He said that secrecy laws make it impossible to challenge in court.

Clemons has the unique perspective of experiencing the lead up to an execution while still being alive to talk about it. He was just five days from his own execution date when he was given a stay because of the potential inhumanity of lethal injection. That stay proved critical to Clemons. By the time Missouri’s courts lifted the stay, evidence suppressed for years in Clemons case was finally made public.

Michael Manners, a judge appointed by the Missouri Supreme Court to review the case, issued a scathing report of police and prosecutorial misconduct in Clemons’ case.

“There was shoddy police work almost beyond comprehension,” he said. “When I said shoddy I meant they took a path of least resistance, closing an investigation early as it was the easiest thing to do.”

Manners ruled that Clemons confession was the result of hours of police coercion and suppressed evidence. Clemons said police beat him; a medical examiner gave testimony in support of this claim. All of this had yet to be made public when Clemons’ execution date approached. Clemons has steadfastly maintained his innocence, even pushing to be tried for rape charges filed against him but never pursued.

“I don’t know nothing about any murder,” Clemons told me in two hours of wide-ranging interviews about the circumstance of his crime. “I didn’t rape nobody, I didn’t rob nobody, I didn’t murder anybody. That I do know. I can say that is absolutely true.”

It took nearly two decades for DNA evidence to be admitted into court, evidence that fails to connect Clemons. While all of this pile of evidence remains under scrutiny of the state Supreme Court, Clemons remains on death row. He uses his time as a fierce opponent of the death penalty. In my first interview with him the first words out of his mouth were focused not on his freedom, but the injustice of the death penalty.

“I want to educate people about the Death Penalty in the state of Missouri and how it’s operating right now,” he told me in March.

Clemons was asked what it was like being five days from execution. He offered a small slice of what it may have been like on April 29 for Turner, whose execution has been stayed until the drug problems can be worked out, according to published reports.

“I had a lot of faith that if God wanted me to get a stay I’d get one,” Clemons said. “Whatever happens, it’s in God’s hands. I was more concerned about my family than I was myself with me being executed. If I am executed the pain would be relatively short compared to what my family would have to live with.”

Clemons may well have his case overturned and be found innocent. It’s hard to imagine how any court could not see the need for a retrial based on Judge Masters’ ruling if we still have a shred of innocent until proven guilty within our criminal justice system. If police beatings, suppressed evidence, shoddy police work don’t constitute a measure of doubt it’s hard to say what does. If he is found innocent, the only reason he is alive is because of the legal maneuvers that questioned the validity of lethal injection. His co-defendant has already been executed.

The Problem of Innocence

Innocence is the tip of the sword for those against the death penalty. Our system is designed to ensure that all doubt of innocence is removed before an execution and yet this is widely ignored. A study by the University of Michigan released just last week found that between four and five percent of all those executed were likely innocent, at the very least.

“As for the 4.1 percent who were exonerated, the researchers think that’s probably an undercount, as there may be more death row inmates whose cases have not yet been identified and overturned,” Forbes reported.

Still another factor in the death penalty equation is the uneven application of its practices. Since 2010 just seven states – Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arizona, Alabama and Mississippi — have conducted nearly 90 percent of all executions in the country. Texas alone with 68 executions far outpaces the 23 performed by all the other 43 states combined.

As such, the work of seven states – and as we’ve seen played out in the Oklahoma courts the past three weeks – in highly politicized rulings have created a de facto national policy on executions that falls far below the constitutional standards.

Oklahoma may have tried to pull back the curtain during a failed execution and its courts may have ruled that the process itself can be shrouded in secrecy, but executions in America are subjected by law to the highest standards of proof, standards that have failed to be adhered to in too many cases.

This article originally published in the May 19, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.