Oklahoma Executions Delayed Amid Drug Shortage

[Judi Lynn]

Source: NBC News

Oklahoma Executions Delayed Amid Drug Shortage
First published March 18th 2014, 1:18 pm
By Tracy Connor

An Oklahoma appeals court has postponed the executions of two convicted killers for a month after the state revealed it didn't know what drugs it planned to use for the lethal injections.

Clayton Lockett, who was slated to die Thursday, had his date moved to April 22. Charles Warner, who was supposed to be executed on March 27, was moved to April 29.

The delay grew out of a lawsuit the two men filed demanding Oklahoma disclose where it was getting the pentobarbital and vecuronium for the executions.

In a brief filed Monday, the state dropped a bombshell: It had not been able to get the two drugs and was considering a last-minute change to the protocol.



Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/oklahoma-executions-delayed-amid-drug-shortage-n55926

[KamaAina]

1. Time to call somebody a

[7962]

2. Thanks for the laugh of the day!

[hack89]

3. Good. nt

[valerief]

4. Lack of drugs don't stop Libor-fixing bankers. nt

[TeeYiYi]

5. A drug shortage...

...amidst an ammo shortage. What's an executioner to do?



TYY

[Sunlei]

6. I hope no one sells them the drugs!

[ck4829]

7. Probably part of the EU boycott, so they'll have little luck getting an exact replacement

[Jake Stern]

8. Dear Oklahoma:

Don't execute people and you won't have to worry about such issues.

Sincerely,

Common Sense

[Uponthegears]

9. Not getting the message

Years ago the Supreme Court in a case called Trop v. Dulles held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment is to be determined according to evolving standards of decency. When you can't legally obtain execution drugs from any pharmaceutical company located in the Western world and even states in the death belt can't get a single pharmacist in their own state to provide them execution drugs unless the state guarantees that no one will find out that the pharmacist had anything to do with capital punishment, do you think that maybe, just maybe, capital punishment violates evolving standards of decency?