Okla. death row inmates seek execution drug overhaul, stays

OKLAHOMA CITY - Lawyers for four Oklahoma death row inmates asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn a 10th Circuit Court ruling that approved the state's execution drug protocol and halt their upcoming executions.

Charles Warner is scheduled to die Thursday, while Richard Eugene Glossip, John Marion Grant and Benjamin Robert Cole have executions set over the next seven weeks. They claim that using the surgical sedative midazolam in their executions will be unconstitutional because it doesn't reliably produce "a deep, comalike unconsciousness."

In April 2014, Oklahoma botched the execution of Clayton Lockett, who writhed and strained on the gurney before finally dying of a heart attack.

The inmates said previous court decisions require that sedation be so strong that inmates would not feel the effects of drugs that stop the heart and lungs. Oklahoma previously used sodium thiopental and pentobarbital, but the drugs' manufacturers stopped making those available to states for executions.

Oklahoma had also used sodium thiopental, which manufacturers will not make available for executions.

"The Attorney General did not choose midazolam because it would lead to a more humane method of executing the condemned; the Attorney General chose midazolam out of convenience and political expediency to ensure that then scheduled executions would go forward," the lawsuit states.

Aaron Cooper, a spokesman for Attorney General Scott Pruitt, said the state has an obligation to ensure the executions are carried out. A local federal judge and the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver have said the executions may proceed.

Warner was convicted of raping and killing his roommate's 11-month-old daughter in 1997 in Oklahoma City.