Oklahoma executed Charles Warner on Thursday night, the state’s first lethal injection since the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in April.

Attorneys for Warner and three other Oklahoma inmates asked the US supreme court for a stay, but the court denied the request in a 5-4 decision. The lawyers argued that the first of three drugs in a lethal cocktail – midazolam – would not properly sedate a person, even if the drug were properly administered.

Warner, who was convicted of raping and killing an 11-month-old girl, was scheduled to die in April in a rare double execution, but his was called off after witnesses watched Lockett struggle and groan on the gurney. Lockett died 43 minutes after the execution began, according to the state. There was a problem with the IV in Lockett’s groin area that went unnoticed because it was covered with a sheet, according to a state investigation.

Associated Press media witness Sean Murphy said Warner’s execution lasted 18 minutes, and the inmate said he had been “poked” five times.



“It hurts,” Warner said. “It feels like acid.”



Murphy reported he made the statement before the drugs began flowing.



Then the drugs started and, according to Murphy, Warner said: “My body is on fire.”

His execution was witnessed by his mother and sister, who cried, Murphy said.

Warner also said “I’m not afraid to die”, said journalist Morgan Chesky. Although his microphone had been cut off, Warner was still audible from the chamber. The execution began at 7.10pm and he was declared dead at 7.28 pm, Chesky reported. After 7.12 pm, he was silent, motionless and twitched a few times. There was no movement after 7.18 pm, Chesky said.

Warner was scheduled to die at 6pm, but the prison waited to hear word from the supreme court.

The Oklahoma attorney general, Scott Pruitt, said in a statement after the execution that Warner’s victim experienced “unimaginable violence”.

“After unprecedented legal wrangling and more than a decade of delay, Adrianna is finally receiving justice,” he said.

The Oklahoma governor, Mary Fallin, said: “Justice was served tonight as the state executed Charles Warner for the heinous crime of raping and murdering an infant.



“I appreciate the professionalism shown by Department of Corrections employees during this process.”

Madeline Cohen, an attorney for Warner, said he was executed with a drug that is “not approved for general anaesthesia” and “because Oklahoma injected Mr Warner with a paralytic tonight, acting as a chemical veil, we will never know whether he experienced the intense pain of suffocation and burning that would result from injecting a conscious person with rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride”.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she would have stayed the execution of Warner and the three other Oklahoma petitioners, and justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G Breyer and Elena Kagan joined her dissent.

“I find the district court’s conclusion that midazolam will in fact work as intended difficult to accept given recent experience with the use of this drug,” Sotomayor wrote. “Lockett was able to regain consciousness even after having received a dose of midazolam— confirmed by a blood test — supposedly sufficient to knock him out entirely”.

Midazolam was also used in the executions of Dennis McGuire in Ohio and Joseph Wood in Arizona that went awry in 2014.

Sotomayor said Florida’s “apparent success” using midazolam was “subject to question” because it also employs a paralytic drug.

“The inmate may be fully conscious but unable to move,” she wrote.

She said Oklahoma’s expert witness on midazolam “cited no studies, but instead appeared to rely primarily on the website www.drugs.com”.

She said states were increasingly relying “on new and scientifically untested methods of execution”.

“Petitioners have committed horrific crimes, and should be punished,” she wrote.



“But the eighth amendment guarantees that no one should be subjected to an execution that causes searing, unnecessary pain before death. I hope that our failure to act today does not portend our unwillingness to consider these questions.”

Florida also executed a man Thursday night using the same method as Oklahoma, Johnny Shane Kormondy, the convicted ringleader of a 1993 home invasion robbery that ended with the murder of a banker and the rape of his wife.



Warner was convicted of raping and killing 11-month-old Adrianna Waller in 1997. Warner lived in Oklahoma City with baby Adrianna and her mother, Shonda Waller. The baby was found to have died from multiple injures to her head, chest and abdomen, and a doctor diagnosed physical and sexual abuse, according to documents.

Shonda Waller said in a January 2014 interview that she morally opposes the death penalty and her views are rooted in her Christian faith.

Oklahoma assistant attorney general John Hadden said a “massive” investigation was conducted after the Lockett execution, recommendations were issued and the corrections department is “confident that they have addressed every one of those and is ready to move forward. The state, as a whole, is committed to having a constitutional process.”

Three Oklahoma death row prisoners with upcoming execution dates have a separate request remaining before the US supreme court to review their case.

Warner’s last meal, served at noon, was boneless hot wings, potato wedges, Coke, fruit cups, coleslaw, a McDonald’s Big Mac meal with no onions and gummy worms.