BY TARA CULP-RESSLER

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. Continue reading @ThinkProgress: An Independent Autopsy Figured Out How Oklahoma Botched That Execution So Badly →