Sister Helen Prejean, who has spearheaded the campaign to save Glossip’s life, was elated that the stay had been issued: “A food preservative!” she exclaimed after learning about the state’s drug quandary.
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“This stay is ordered due to the Department of Corrections having received potassium acetate as drug number three for the three-drug protocol”, Fallin wrote in an executive order, referencing the state’s three-drug lethal cocktail. The stay was granted to allow time to check on the viability of the substitute drug, “and/or obtain potassium chloride”.
Oklahoma and other states began using midazolam, a sedative, after pharmaceutical companies stopped selling the drugs previously used for lethal injections to U.S. prisons. Glossip’s lawyer, Dale Baich, said they only learned that prison officials meant to swap potassium chloride for potassium acetate from Fallin’s statement. “Hope springs eternal”, she said. “Hopefully, [the Supreme Court] will grant us a stay”.
In addition, the state has two other executions scheduled in the coming weeks, but it was not known if those would be delayed as well.
He had been on California’s death row since 1992 for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl, Yvette Woodruff, in Ontario. In the hour that followed, corrections officials awaiting word that it was underway said things were on hold.
British billionaire Richard Branson took out a full-page ad in The Oklahoman newspaper urging the state to stop the planned execution of Glossip, saying there is a “breathtaking” lack of evidence in the case. Shortly after 3 p.m., the time of the scheduled execution, the protesters were anticipating news that Glossip had died.
On Wednesday, Georgia executed its first woman in seven decades, Kelly Gissendaner.
Glossip himself was unsure if his stay was because of the Supreme Court or the state.
To the United States last week throughout the pontiff’s visit, he encouraged Congress to abolish the death penalty.
Oklahoma’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board previous year unanimously denied Glossip’s request for clemency. A spokesman for Fallin said the governor doesnt have the authority to grant a commutation.
Pope Francis has appealed to the governor of Oklahoma to commute an inmate’s death sentence. But hours before his scheduled execution the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals granted Glossip a two-week reprieve after his attorneys claimed they had new evidence that he was innocent. Thoughout he has maintained his innocence. Justin Sneed, the man who bludgeoned Van Treese to death, was given a life sentence.
In 1998, Glossip was at demanded endlessly, but also in 2001 the… A man who’d once known Sneed came forward to say that Sneed had told him he’d framed Glossip, defense attorneys now claim.
However, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has said he was confident that the criminal appeals court would conclude that there was “nothing worthy” that would lead it to overturn the guilty verdict. The case rested nearly exclusively on Sneed’s claims.
The stay was in part so unexpected because Glossip’s appeals on grounds of innocence had been repeatedly rejected.
That 37-day stay of execution doesn’t include any reference to doubt over Glossip’s guilt in the case.
They added Sneed has given contradictory accounts of the events.
In a 5-4 June decision, with Anthony Kennedy joining the conservative justices, the Supreme Court approved the drug’s use for future executions.
On Tuesday, Glossip’s attorneys made a last-ditch request to the U.S. Supreme Court.
About 30 people have gathered in front of the Oklahoma Governor’s Mansion to protest the scheduled execution of death row inmate Richard Glossip.
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Oklahoma changed its protocol in the wake of the April 2014 botched execution of Clayton Lockett, in which an IV was improperly inserted.
