This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Oklahoma will delay all scheduled executions while it reviews how the department of corrections received the wrong drug as it prepared to lethally inject an inmate.

Untested drugs, secret sources: the controversy over executions rages on Read more

The state attorney general, Scott Pruitt, filed paperwork on Thursday asking the Oklahoma court of criminal appeals to halt next Wednesday’s execution of Benjamin Cole, plus the executions of John Marion Grant and Richard Glossip over the next month.



Glossip was set to die on Wednesday, but Governor Mary Fallin halted the execution after the department of corrections said it had received a shipment of potassium acetate, rather than the potassium chloride listed in the state’s protocols.

Pruitt said his office needs time to determine what went wrong on Wednesday and whether the state’s execution guidelines should be reviewed again.

The Oklahoma board of corrections met in McAlester on Thursday. The department director, Robert Patton, has been tight-lipped on why or how officials had potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride for Glossip’s execution.

Fallin’s office said the corrections department received the drugs on Wednesday.



A court filing says the state told Glossip’s attorneys it had “sufficient drugs” to carry out three upcoming executions. An 11 Augst letter from assistant attorney general John Hadden did not say whether the department physically possessed the drugs at the time.