Before being declared dead, a prisoner sentenced to the death penalty suffered numerous seizures during his execution in the United States on Thursday afternoon.
John Grant , an Afro-American from 60 years, received the lethal injection in a prison of Oklahoma , in the southern US, after being sentenced to death for murder in 1999.
A last minute decision by the US Supreme Court authorized procedure.
It was the first death of a prisoner in the last seven years in that state, since a series of failed executions led to a temporary moratorium on capital punishment.
The manner in which Grant died, however, has again raised questions about methods of lethal injection in the United States.
The prisoner vomited and he convulsed “two dozen times” before falling unconscious and receiving a cocktail of drugs that ended his life.
The Oklahoma Department of Corrections said the procedure went according to plan.
“The execution of inmate Grant was carried out in accordance with Oklahoma Department of Corrections protocols and without complications,” Communications Director Justin Wolf said in a statement.
But what some journalists witnessed questions the official statement.
What happened?
Grant was serving a sentence of 130 years in prison for various armed robberies when on 1998 murdered Gay Car ter , an employee of the prison cafeteria.
Witnesses testified that Grant led Carter to a closet used to store cleaning utensils and stabbed her 16 times with a spell weapon.
He was sentenced to death in 1999, one year after the murder.
He entered the death chamber on Thursday afternoon after the last decision of the Supreme Court.
Dan Snyder, a journalist for the Fox network, witnessed the execution along with five other reporters.
He explained that immediately after it was admini After the sedative drug, midazolam , Grant began to convulse. “So much so that the upper part of his back rose repeatedly from the stretcher.”
“As the seizures, began to vomit several times over the next few minutes. The medical staff entered the death chamber to clean up Grant’s vomit, who was still breathing, ”he continued.
A minute later, the prisoner received the second and third drugs to stop his respiratory system and cardiac.
At 4: 20 pm, medical staff checked his pulse and looked at Grant’s pupils.
“One minute later, at 4: 21 pm, Principal from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, Scott Crow, entered the room and declared that the execution was complete, ”explained Snyder.
His testimony is similar to others described by journalists, including that of Sean Murphy , from the AP agency, who explained to his colleagues that Grant convulsed “about two dozen times, full body” .
He assured that he had not seen something like this in the 14 executions you have witnessed.
The controversial death cocktail
The lawyers de Grant argued that the use of the sedative midazolam would constitute cruel and unusual punishment, violating their constitutional rights.
That sedative was identified as a potential factor in a series of failed executions in Oklahoma, the latest of which took place in 2015.
Clayton Lockett , a convicted murderer executed in Oklahoma in April 2015, took longer than 40 minutes to die after he was injected ad prays in the muscle tissue rather than the bloodstream.
At Charles Warner’s execution the following year, he used the wrong drug. And another execution was called off at the last minute when it was discovered that a wrong drug was also about to be used again.
All of those cases led to a moratorium on the death penalty in Oklahoma.
Grant “became a human experiment for the challenge that other death row inmates have made to the Oklahoma execution process,” said Robert Dunham, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
“Executions like this provide opponents of the penalty death plus evidence that states in a hurry to execute simply cannot be entrusted with the death penalty, ”he told AFP agency.
A lawsuit against the use of injection Lethal Oklahoma is scheduled to go to Jui cio in February 2022
“There should be no more executions in Oklahoma until we go to trial in February to address the state’s problematic lethal injection protocol,” said Dale Baich, attorney for Grant and other death row inmates. .
The execution of another inmate sentenced to death in the state, Julius Jones , an Afro-American of 41 years, is scheduled for the 18 of November.
Jones has repeatedly said that he is innocent and his case has attracted the attention of celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and American football quarterback Baker Mayfield.
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