"Medical expert: Inmate was still conscious and experienced painful execution," is by Ziva Branstetter of the Tulsa World.
Dr. David Waisel associate professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School, said midazolam is typically used in small doses to patients before surgery. Waisel, who has testified or consulted in about eight death penalty cases, said he is not aware of another execution using in the same three-drug combination used by Oklahoma on Tuesday.
And:
Waisel said people who are unconscious are not capable of speaking and bodily movements. Waisel said given the timeline and drugs used, "it is possible that he received enough midazolam to make him sleepy, but not the full intended dose. He said if the second and third drugs were administered directly to Lockett's blood stream through a vein "he would have died right away."
"What I suspect happened was that the two drugs were not injected into the vein, but were injected in the soft tissue around the vein,” he said. “... That can be very painful, and would be consistent with the reaction being reported."
Waisel said because so many minutes had elapsed between administering of the midazolam and Lockett's violent reaction, "clearly this sounds like a new injection of something that was very painful.
Earlier coverage from Oklahoma begins with the preceding post.
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