Photo: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP / Getty Images
The Supreme Court denied on Wednesday the stay of execution of a prisoner sentenced to the death sentence in Oklahoma, whose execution was scheduled for less than a day later, according to KOCO 5 News.
Donald Grant is scheduled to be executed at 10 Thursday am at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester. Donald Grant was sentenced to death for the murders in 2001 of two Del City motel workers , Brenda McElyea and Suzette Smith.
The execution of Donald Grant will be the first to take place in the United States in 2021.
His lawyers questioned the state’s use of midazolam in its three-drug lethal injection cocktail, calling it inappropriate.
A federal judge refused to issue a stay earlier this month, and the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled Monday that the defense failed to show that the lower court’s decision was in error. The Supreme Court also denied the stay of execution in a brief order on Wednesday.
The superior court order also denied a request to suspend his partner on death row, Gilbert Postelle, scheduled for execution on 14 February. Postelle was sentenced to death for the murders in 2008 of James Alderson and Amy Wright in a park in Del City Mobile Homes. Received a lesser sentence for the murders of Donnie Swindle and Terry Smith.
The federal judge District Councilor Stephen Friot of the Western District of Oklahoma refused to block state-planned executions in the past 14 in January and said it was unlikely the two men could prove that use of the drug would cause more pain than that caused by inserting the intravenous injection they is used to deliver it.
Oklahoma and several other states use midazolam in their execution protocols as a sedative. The state then administers vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Oklahoma carried out two executions in 2021 after resuming the punishment, that of John Grant on 28 October and Bigler Stouffer’s on October 8 December.
Lawsuits Against Lethal Injection
Donald Grant and Postelle are among several Oklahoma death row inmates who sued the state over its lethal injection protocol after botched executions above, according to The Norman Transcript.
The state announced on 13 February 2020 that he planned to resume executions almost six years after that the use of the wrong drug would lead to botched execution of a convicted murderer.
The Oklahoma lethal injection protocolwas under scrutiny in 2014 when Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack
amid complications during his execution.
Autopsy reports released a year later indicated that prison officials of Oklahoma used the wrong medication (potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride) during the process. Lockett complained of a burning sensation and attempted to raise his head and speak after doctors declared him unconscious.
The same incorrect drug was given to prison officials for use in the scheduled execution of Richard Glossip in 2015. Former Governor Mary Ballin called off Glossip’s execution with a last-minute indefinite stay after learning of the discrepancy.
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