At the end of April, an execution in Oklahoma that went horribly wrong — leaving inmate Clayton Lockett writhing in apparent pain before he eventually died of a massive heart attack — sparked a national debate about the ethics of the death penalty. The media attention has largely been focused on the fact that Oklahoma used a secret combination of untested drugs in its lethal injections. But according to an independent autopsy report commissioned by Lockett’s attorneys, an ineffective cocktail of lethal drugs wasn’t necessarily the biggest problem that night.
In fact, the IV pumping the drugs into Lockett’s body was improperly placed by individuals who may not have been trained about how to insert it correctly.
The preliminary findings by forensic pathologist Dr. Joseph Cohen report that there were “skin punctures on the extremities and right and left femoral areas” of Lockett’s body, which means that the execution team made several failed attempts to place the IV in Lockett’s groin area. Eventually, they did manage to place the IV, but the autopsy report says it only “nicked” Lockett’s femoral vein. So the lethal drugs were actually absorbed into his muscle.
Right after the botched execution, state officials claimed that Lockett’s veins “blew out,” suggesting that he may have had weak veins that were susceptible to collapsing. But the pathologist’s report disputes that, finding that Lockett actually had perfectly healthy veins. In reality, it was the IV itself that was the source of the problem.
Cohen’s autopsy report lends even more credence to the argument that lethal injections can quickly go wrong when trained medical professionals aren’t performing them. That’s an increasing issue with the way this country puts inmates to death.
Because the American Medical Association, the American Public Health Association, the American Board of Anesthesiology, and the American Nurses Association all prohibit their members from assisting in executions, saying it violates their code of medical ethics, there aren’t always qualified people in the room when inmates are being prepared for lethal injection. And that can lead to situations like the one in Oklahoma, where prison employees struggle for nearly an hour to find a vein.
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Curated from thinkprogress.org