The Guardian posts, "Oklahoma inmates file lawsuit over 'unconstitutional' executions," by Katie Fretland.
A group of Oklahoma death row inmates filed a federal lawsuit against state officials on Wednesday, arguing their executions would violate the constitution and amount to human experimentation on prisoners after a botched execution earlier this year.
Lawyers filed the complaint on behalf of 20 men and one woman in the US district court for the western district of Oklahoma against the state’s corrections director Robert Patton, Oklahoma State Penitentiary warden Anita Trammell, members of the board of corrections and unnamed people involved in lethal injection.The unnamed defendants are a doctor responsible for inserting intravenous lines and cutting into inmates to gain vein access, a paramedic also responsible for inserting IVs and three anonymous executioners who administer the drugs.
"Okla. death row inmates seek to halt executions," is the AP report, via KOTV-TV.
A group of Oklahoma death row inmates are asking a federal judge to halt their executions, claiming in a lawsuit that the state's death penalty procedure is unconstitutional and that state officials are experimenting with inmates' lives.
In a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday, 21 death row inmates asked a judge to disallow any attempt to execute them under the current procedures. The lawsuit contends the state's current lethal injection protocol presents a risk of "severe pain, needless suffering and a lingering death."
The lawsuit follows the state's botched April 29 execution of Clayton Lockett, who writhed on the gurney, moaned and clenched his teeth for several minutes while the state used a new three-drug method.
You can view the Oklahoma civil lawsuit at the link.
Earlier coverage from Oklahoma begins at the link.
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