Ian Woods, Senior News Correspondent

Exactly three years ago I stumbled across what I thought was an interesting story, which I intended to get my Sky colleagues in the US to take a look at.

Instead, I got involved in the story myself, and it led to an emotional rollercoaster, months of work, and now, finally, an 85,000-word book.

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Surviving Execution is published next week and it is the first time in my 35-year career in journalism that I have cared so much about a story that I felt that only a book would do it justice.


Some of you may have watched my TV reports or listened to my podcasts about Richard Glossip, a death row inmate in Oklahoma who invited me to witness his execution.

He was convicted of the 1997 murder of his boss, even though another man confessed to carrying out the killing.

Image: Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip

The murderer blamed Glossip for inciting him to do it, and escaped the death penalty in return for his testimony.

I became convinced Glossip is a victim of a miscarriage of justice. Now I can reveal that even one of the jurors who sentenced him to death no longer believes he should be executed.

Glossip was due to be killed by lethal injection in September 2015, but is still alive because of a blunder in which prison authorities realised at the last minute that they had the wrong drug to kill him with.

While I was inside the prison, waiting to be taken to the death chamber's viewing room, one of the jurors who convicted him was at home, closely following events on TV. The juror wants to remain anonymous, but spoke to me for my book.

They said: "That day I was looking at the clock. I was very upset. I was praying for Richard. I went into deep prayer. I'm a Catholic and I feel sorry for him. I was praying for his soul.

"And then I watched the news and saw some jackass ordered the wrong drug. And that was the first time I really felt bad for Richard Glossip. To me, that's inhumane and cruel to get your last meal, to get up to the door and then someone says: 'We're stupid, we ordered the wrong drug'. That p****s me off."

All executions in Oklahoma have been on hold ever since that aborted attempt. An official inquiry by a grand jury criticised officials for a series of errors and recommended changes to the way executions are carried out in future.

But so far, they have not named a new execution date for Glossip. The juror who spoke to Sky News questions whether there should ever be another attempt to pass the sentence they imposed.

Image: Glossip was due to be killed in September 2015 but it did not go ahead due to a drugs mix-up

"In the old days they hung them with a rope and if the rope broke, that's it. That's what happened here. The rope broke," they said.

If the Oklahoma attorney general decides to resume executions, he has to give 150 days' notice.

Despite Oklahoma's problems, the number of people executed in the US has risen for the first time in almost a decade - with 23 men put to death in eight states.

A year earlier only five states carried out executions, with 20 prisoners dying through lethal injections.

Arkansas reactivated its death chamber after a 12-year gap, and Virginia and Ohio both resumed executions after a brief lull. Nevada planned to carry out its first death sentence for 12 years but was thwarted by a legal appeal.

The number of executions has been in steady decline since it reached a record figure of 98 in 1999. According to a database maintained by the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Centre, the number of death sentences being passed by courts has plummeted during the same period from 295 to just 39.

"Perhaps more than any place else, the changes in Harris County, Texas, are symbolic of the long-term change in capital punishment in the United States," said Robert Dunham, the Death Penalty Information Centre's executive director. "For the first time since 1974, the county that has carried out more executions than any other did not execute any prisoner or sentence any defendant to death."

But those in favour of the ultimate sentence have been heartened by the unambiguous support of President Donald Trump. He demanded the death penalty within hours of the arrest of the suspect in a terror attack which killed eight people in New York - even though New York abolished the death penalty in 2005 and hasn't executed anyone since 1963.

Those in favour of the ultimate sentence have been heartened by the unambiguous support of President Donald Trump.

More significantly, his rapid appointment of conservative federal judges is likely to make it more difficult to overturn legal appeals on behalf of prisoners.

Some anti-death penalty campaigners believed there was the prospect of the death penalty being abolished nationwide if Hillary Clinton had become President and appointed a liberal justice to fill a vacancy on the US Supreme Court.

But President Trump's election meant conservative Neil Gorsuch was nominated and confirmed. Within two weeks of taking his seat on the court, Mr Gorsuch had joined other conservatives in upholding a series of executions in Arkansas. Four liberal justices wanted to stop them, but were outvoted thanks to Mr Gorsuch's support.

President Trump has also nominated 18 new conservative judges to fill vacancies on the US courts of appeals. These are lifetime appointments, so could influence legal rulings for decades.

Even so, public support for the death penalty has dropped significantly. A Gallup poll in October found 55% to 41% of Americans in favour - that's the lowest level of support since 1972. A year earlier it was 60% to 37% in favour.

Another botched attempt to carry out an execution occurred in Ohio in November. Alva Campbell, a 69-year-old convicted murderer who suffers from cancer, lung disease, asthma, heart problems and wears a colostomy bag, was taken into the execution chamber, but medical staff were unable to find a suitable vein to use for the intravenous injection.

Officials were forced to order a stay of execution, and new date has been set for June 2019. His medical condition is unlikely to improve in the next 20 months.

Surviving Execution by Ian Woods is published on 4 January by Atlantic Books.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously: Ed Conway - I tried to predict 2017, how did I do?