In a news release, Fallin said last-minute questions were raised about the drug, and she issued the stay after consulting with the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office and the state Corrections Department.
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But it was a mystery when the prison chose to use potassium acetate in the first place – and why no one in charge appeared to know about the change until the very last minute.
Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton gives a statement to reporters at the media center at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, Wednesday, September 30, 2015.
“It is unclear why, and extremely frustrating to the attorney general, that the Department of Corrections did not have the correct drugs to carry out the execution”, Cooper said. “Hopefully, [the Supreme Court] will grant us a stay”.
While three more inmates are scheduled to be executed next week in the United States, the number of executions has declined in recent years. Investigators say he began selling his belongings and telling people he was leaving town after being questioned by police.
Part of Wednesday’s delay, though, occurred as the Corrections Department waited for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on Glossip’s claim of innocence.
Vigano sent a similar letter Tuesday to officials in Georgia, but that didn’t prevent the execution of Kelly Renee Gissendaner.
He was originally scheduled to be executed earlier this month but a petition, largely driven by RYOT readers, resulted in a two-week stay of his execution so that a judge could review possible new evidence in the case of the 52-year-old.
The United States remains the only Western country to maintain the death penalty. Fallin, a Republican, rejected a previous request.
“He has now had multiple trials, seventeen years of appeals, and three stays of his execution”, Fallin said.
The letter urged concerned citizens to call the governor and ask to delay the execution for 60 days.
Glossip’s attorneys have argued that he was improperly sentenced and should have another hearing to prove his innocence.
But after making a deal with authorities, Justin Sneed testified that it was Glossip who’d paid him to do it.
June 2004 – A second Oklahoma County jury convicts Glossip and sentences him to death.
The 53-year-old was scheduled to recieve a three-drug exectution cocktail after he was sentenced to death in 2004.
Sneed had been a key prosecution witness against Glossip but his attorneys had said they had an affidavit from another inmate who said Sneed admitted to setting Glossip up.
The executive order stated that the Department of Corrections got a different drug than what’s normally used, causing them to review protocol.
No physical evidence tied Glossip to the crime, adding that he was conviction hinged on the testimony of Sneed, then 19, a maintenance worker at the motel, who confessed to carrying out the killing. It rejected an appeal from Glossip’s lawyers without explanation.
Fallin reset Glossip’s execution for November 6, saying it would give the state enough time to determine whether potassium acetate is a suitable substitute, or to find a supply of potassium chloride.
Oklahoma’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board previous year unanimously denied Glossip’s request for clemency. “Nobody has really told me anything”.
Oklahoma Solicitor General Patrick Wyrick argued that the state had improved its protocol since the Lockett execution and noted that a lower court had found that a 500-milligram dose of midazolam would “with near certainty, render these petitioners unconscious and unable to feel pain”.
The Supreme Court, in an April 2008 decision, upheld the constitutionality of execution by lethal injection. It rewrote its guidelines and assured federal courts from Oklahoma City to Washington that its procedures were sound. State law prohibits prison officials from revealing the supplier of the drugs. In a widely-discussed dissent in the case, Breyer, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, questioned the constitutionality of capital punishment. Oklahoma has previously used potassium chloride in that role. He was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 3 p.m. CDT at the death chamber in McAlester.
Glossip, talking through a speaker phone inside the prison, said the grounds for the stay are “just insane”. Because of this, the high profile case has drawn strong support from celebrities, including Pope Francis, Susan Sarandon and Richard Branson, all against the death penalty.
He was convicted after the 1997 killing of Van Treese, despite what’s been described as a remarkable lack of evidence against him. Prejean had planned to attend the execution if it occurs.
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“This is another reason to strike the death penalty”, he said.
