Judge hears of ‘bloody mess’ execution as Okla. seeks to lift moratorium

A federal judge heard witness testimonies on Wednesday regarding Oklahoma's attempt to resume executing prisoners, nine months after the lethal injection of Clayton Lockett lasted an excruciating 43 minutes, during which an artery burst, causing what one warden described as “a bloody mess.”

Attorneys representing 21 death-row inmates in Oklahoma filed court documents on Friday revealing that Lockett’s death was far more grisly than previously portrayed, according to The Tulsa World newspaper on Sunday.

In court testimony Wednesday, Dr. Joseph Cohen, a pathologist hired by the inmate's lawyer, said he was convinced Lockett suffered after being declared unconcious.

"Mr. Lockett had been deemed unconscious but became conscious again," Cohen testified at the hearing, which will decide if Oklahoma should resume executions Jan. 15 after a self-imposed moratorium.

The public previously learned that Lockett’s April 29 execution lasted nearly 45 minutes and that his protracted death was only the latest in a string of executions that went awry. Descriptions of his final minutes reignited controversy around the usage of secret, untested drugs.

But according to The Tulsa World, earlier reports left out gruesome details of Lockett’s death that the state’s public safety office tried to keep sealed.

One witness said the execution “was like a horror movie,” the newspaper reported, with a paramedic describing 16 failed attempts to find Lockett’s vein.

Oklahoma State Penitentiary warden Anita Trammell told prison officials that Lockett’s artery burst, causing “a bloody mess,” according to the new court documents (PDF).

The doctor administering the intravenous drugs, Trammell said, “commented that he had to ‘get enough money out of this to go and buy a new jacket,’” the documents said.

The doctor was finally able to administer the sedative midazolam through Lockett’s femoral vein, marking the first time Oklahoma used the drug during an execution.

When the doctor tried to set a second IV line, he inadvertently hit an artery, and blood backed up into the IV line, the paramedic recalled, “I don’t think he realized that he hit the artery, and I remember saying, ‘You’ve got the artery. We’ve got blood everywhere,’” the documents said.

When Trammell was asked what the plan was if they found another vein, considering they had already injected all the drugs they had, “she said there was no plan.”

The executioners involved in the process reported that Lockett had a violent reaction to the drugs, writhing on the table and lurching upward.

“In my opinion, he tried to get up, because it floored me,’” the executioner told investigators, according to the documents.

Oklahoma Department of Corrections director Robert Patton admitted in the court documents that he had learned in March that it didn’t have the proper drugs required by the state’s execution procedures and wouldn’t be able to obtain them because of a shortage.

Patton also admitted that the drug cocktail was chosen not by Trammell but by the attorney general’s office, which did online research using “Wiki leaks or whatever it is,’” the court records said.

The office also read transcripts of an expert witness who had testified in Florida on the use of midazolam for an execution, but they never had a conversation about it.

“’I signed the damn thing,’” Trammell said, according to the court records. “’I did not write that policy. I did not choose those drugs.’”

Patton explained that there was political pressure to make the decision quickly. “The staff over there was under a lot of pressure to, to say, ‘Get it done,’” he said in the court documents. He added, “’I got to say there was a definite push to make the decision, get it done, hurry up about it.’”

While the governor stayed Lockett’s execution as the situation devolved, official autopsy results showed that Lockett died as a result of the drug cocktail given to him.

Prison authorities in multiple states are facing heightened pressure to halt executions following a series of disastrous executions. In Ohio, for example, executioners used an untested combination of drugs that caused condemned inmate Dennis McGuire to gasp and sputter for 30 minutes, the longest execution in the state in 15 years.