That Oklahoma execution at the end of April drew nation attention because it took Clayton Lockett 43 torturous minutes to die from an experimental death drug cocktail ordered to be injected into him. Lockett had been convicted of raping and murdering a 19-year-old woman during a robbery in 1992, when he also was 19.

Oklahoma and other states have had a hard time getting the drugs they previously used because no manufacturer wants to publicly supply those poisons. Whoever transported the batch of drugs used to kill Lockett showed up at the transfer in hoods and were paid double the usual price for being couriers in the matter.

The injection did not go well, something the public has known since not long after Lockett was declared dead. A new report issued in September offered some details, including the fact that Lockett had tried to preempt his execution by cutting himself with a razor blade and taking an overdose of anti-anxiety drugs he had hoarded.

Although it was for a while stated that Lockett had died of a heart attack, the autopsy said no. Cause of death was stated as lethal injection. The report also noted there had been several failed attempts inserting the IV to direct the state's poisons into Lockett's circulatory system. Several meaning 16, that being the number of puncture wounds counted. Finally, they hooked Lockett up with the IV inserted into the femoral vein of his groin. But the needle was an inch too short to do the job properly and it wound up in the femoral artery instead. Lockett spoke and tried to rise on the execution table nearly 10 minutes after he was supposed to be knocked out by the sedative and he writhed for a considerable period.



One witness said the execution “was like a horror movie,” recalling that Lockett kept bucking and trying to get off the gurney. […] Although the prison lacked the right needles and had no backup drugs, the doctor attempted another femoral IV. No one was sure why. Blood backed up into the IV line, and the paramedic told the doctor he’d hit the artery, noting the doctor seemed anxious.

“We’ve got blood everywhere,” the paramedic recalled to investigators.

New papers filed on behalf of 21 Oklahoma death row inmates have now revealed still more details . Among them: The execution chamber was a bloody mess after Lockett was pronounced dead, the staff had been under pressure to get Lockett's execution and that of another inmate done on the same day. "[G]et it done, hurry up about it" was the tenor of the day, according comments in the filings by Michael Oakley, former general counsel for the Department of Corrections:As Stephanie Memcimer wrote last May, botched executions aren't all that uncommon thanks to the incompetence of those carrying them out. There's an easy solution: eventually the United States will join the other civilized nations of the world and abolish the death penalty altogether.