New York Times.<\/a>\u00a0 There is no dispute that Lockett died an agonizing death.\u00a0 He was executed using a three-drug combination that included midazolam, pancuronium bromide, and potassium choride.\u00a0 The first drug, midazolam, should have rendered him unconscious, but it failed to do so\u2014either because it wasn\u2019t administered in a high enough dose, or because it was not properly injected into one of his veins.\u00a0 The second drug, pancuronium bromide, should have paralyzed him so that he couldn\u2019t move.\u00a0 Yet Lockett was still moving after more than 13 minutes had passed\u2014and by some accounts, he was writhing in pain, grimacing, speaking, and struggling to sit up.\u00a0 The third drug, potassium chloride, causes a massive heart attack that experts say would cause unbearable pain if the prisoner is not sedated.\u00a0 In fact, Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the drugs were first injected into his body.<\/p>\nAttorneys around the country have fought to persuade the courts that they should not permit executions to go forward in the absence of evidence that lethal injection drugs are reliable and effective.\u00a0 Courts in Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, among other states, have rejected these arguments, largely because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision called\u00a0Baze v. Rees.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>In\u00a0Baze<\/em>, the Supreme Court dismissed the petitioner\u2019s argument that poorly trained prison staff could administer improper doses of the sedative that renders a prisoner unconscious.\u00a0 In essence, the Supreme Court held that an execution method that results in pain, \u201ceither by accident or as an inescapable consequence of death,\u201d does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.\u00a0 The Court shifted the burden to the prisoner to establish that \u201cthe State\u2019s lethal injection protocol creates a demonstrated risk of severe pain.\u201d<\/p>\nBaze must now be re-examined.\u00a0 The botched execution of Clayton Lockett calls for effective judicial oversight of state lethal injection protocols.\u00a0 Moreover, there can be little doubt that an execution procedure that results in prolonged agony for the prisoner is not only inhumane, it is torturous.<\/p>\n
More than 20 years ago, in\u00a0Ng v. Canada,\u00a0<\/em>the United Nations Human Rights Committee held that executing prisoners using the gas chamber constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.\u00a0 Their rationale:\u00a0 \u201casphyxiation may cause prolonged suffering and agony and does not result in death as swiftly as possible, as asphyxiation by cyanide gas may take over 10 minutes.\u201d\u00a0 In light of the 43 minutes that it took Clayton Lockett to die, there can be little doubt that his execution violated international norms providing that the death penalty can only be carried out in a manner that causes \u201cthe least possible physical and mental suffering.\u201d<\/p>\nGiven the evidence that Oklahoma’s actions violated the Torture Convention, President Obama should ensure that an impartial investigation is carried out under Article 12 of the Convention.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last night, Oklahoma executed Clayton Lockett using a combination of drugs that had never before been used to kill a human being.\u00a0 Oklahoma refused to disclose the source of the drugs in the weeks leading up to the execution, dismissing attorneys\u2019 concerns that using the untested drugs could cause an excruciatingly painful death.\u00a0 The Oklahoma […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,74,71,76],"tags":[80,89,98,81],"class_list":["post-2093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-access-to-justice-fr","category-news-fr","category-opinion-fr","category-advocacy-fr","tag-access-to-justice-fr","tag-death-penalty-news-fr","tag-opinion-fr","tag-advocacy-fr"],"better_featured_image":{"id":924,"alt_text":"alt=\"\"","caption":"Photo by Lilly Marfy","description":"","media_type":"image","media_details":{"width":1256,"height":942,"file":"2018\/10\/Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project.jpg","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project-300x225.jpg","width":300,"height":225,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project-300x225.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project-1024x768.jpg","width":1024,"height":768,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project-1024x768.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project-768x576.jpg","width":768,"height":576,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","source_url":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project-768x576.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"post":1993,"source_url":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/Lilly-Marfy_death-penalty-project.jpg"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"external_author":"Sandra Babcock","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2113,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093\/revisions\/2113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpw.lawschool.cornell.edu\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}