Execution by heart attack
Publisher’s note: When I heard about this execution in Oklahoma gone 'wrong,’ I immediately thought about the scene from "The Green Mile” where an inmate is electrocuted improperly and essentially 'cooks’ in front of the gallery of witnesses. When asked by his boss what happened, the character portrayed by Tom Hanks simply said "An execution. A successful one.” "Eduard Delacroix is dead.”
Well, Clayton Lockhart, the man who was convicted of shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman with a sawed-off shotgun and watching as two accomplices buried her alive, is now "successfully" dead. Sadly, the other convict that was to be executed, Charles Warner, who was convicted of raping and killing his roommate's 11-month-old daughter in 1997, and was to be executed right after Mr. Lockhart, has been given a temporary stay because Mr. Lockhart maybe didn’t die according to the plan. Excuse me, but neither of these men gave their victims the sort of respect or dignity that some would afford them. Neither of them offered a stay of murder.
To my way of thinking Mr. Warner should have been made to watch the execution of Mr. Lockhart, put on the same sweat soaked gurney, and then injected with the same needle and "heart attack” inducing cocktail that sent Mr. Lockhart to face final judgment. Or maybe they could have saved time and hooked them both up at the same time.
The bottom line is that my sympathy is with the victims and their families, not with the vile butchers that destroyed those families.
Fox News: McALESTER, Okla. – An Oklahoma inmate whose execution was halted Tuesday because the delivery of a new drug combination was botched died of a heart attack, the state Department of Corrections said. Director Robert Patton said inmate Clayton Lockett died Tuesday after all three drugs were administered. Patton halted Lockett's execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered. He said there was a vein failure. Lockett was writhing on the gurney and shaking uncontrollably.
The planned execution later Tuesday of a second inmate was postponed.