The Clayton Lockett Execution

All right. It was April 29th, 2014. And he tried to get up off the gurney 

in the middle of it. His name was Clayton Lockett. They were trying to 

kill him, but they really just could not figure it out. They couldn't get 

it done.

They made more than a dozen tries inserting IV lines into him, more than a 

dozen tries, including into his arms, into his legs, into his groin. And 

the whole time, he was supposed to be knocked out. He was supposed to be 

unconscious.

But he was not unconscious. He was awake. He was writhing, arching his 

back, talking about how much everything hurt. And it just went on and on 

and on. It went on for ten minutes, and then 20 minutes, and then 30 

minutes and then 40 minutes. He, actually, at one point, ended up try to 

help them, trying to help them kill him.

He tried to help them get the needles into himself because they made these 

more than a dozen tries and nothing was working to knock him out. Finally, 

it went on for so long prison officials who are overseeing the execution, 

they pulled the curtain so the witnesses couldn`t see anymore of what was 

going on. And soon after that, they actually decided they couldn`t go 

ahead with it.

Not that they felt bad and they didn`t want to keep trying to do it, but 

they literally believed that they could not do it. They had messed up 

their chance. It want working. They couldn`t figure it out.

They called the governor. She was at a basketball game at the time, but 

she heard them out from the prison and told them, OK, if they felt like 

they couldn`t complete the execution, they should call it off. The state 

would stop the execution in the middle of it. They would stop trying to 

kill him. So, they started to make preparations to bring Clayton Lockett 

back. They started making preparations to try to revive him after spending 

all this time trying to kill him, but by then he was groaning and then he 

was convulsing and then he was in and out of consciousness.

And then, finally, after 43 minutes, including them trying to call it off 

in the middle of it, and trying to bring him back, after 43 minutes he 

finally died of a heart attack. That was April, 2014. Just botched, 

right?

The idea basically, I mean, whatever you think about the death penalty, 

this is not the way it`s supposed to go. I mean, you`re supposed to be 

rendered unconscious and then they kill you in our sleep. This was the 

opposite of that. Oklahoma just absolutely blew it.

And the drug they were using to try to kill him is a drug that Oklahoma had 

never tried to use before and we learned the execution team, the people who 

are actually sticking him with the needles, the medical people and 

corrections people, people on the team trying to carry out this execution, 

they didn`t know anything about this new drug. They`d never used it before 

obviously. They didn`t know anything about how it was supposed to work, 

how it might be different than other drugs. They`d never trained on it, 

been briefed on it.

And that Clayton Lockett execution ended up making national headlines 

because of how brutal and botched and bloody it was because it went on for 

so long, because the witnesses saw so much of what happened and it was so 

disturbing. But it wasn`t until months after it happened that we found out 

what went wrong there. And we found out specifically how Oklahoma ended up 

getting that drug and why they got that drug.

It turns out in part it was because of this guy. Recognize him?

This little bloody chapter in modern American history is not what this man 

is famous for but it`s part of his record. Let me explain. Back in 2014, 

after the – this execution went so wrong, investigative reporters at “The 

Tulsa World” newspaper, they were able to figure out mostly through court 

documents but also through their own digging that the state in that 

execution, they hadn`t followed their own laws and protocols about how an 

execution like that is supposed to work.

I mean, what happened in that particular execution is the state apparently 

realized sort of belatedly, oops, that they didn`t have drugs on hand for 

this next execution that they wanted to do and when they figured that out, 

rather than stopping the process, raising it up the chain of command, maybe 

delaying the executions a little longer in order to figure out how they 

were going to handle that serious roadblock to what they wanted to do. 

Instead of that, they decided, no, we have to do these executions. Now, 

we`re not going to delay them. We`ve been under a lot of scrutiny. We`re 

going for them and they scrambled. We`ll figure out the drugs.

And specifically, it was lawyers from the general counsel`s office and the 

corrections department and lawyers from the attorney`s general office. 

Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of that state, his office and the top 

lawyer at the Corrections Department, they decided with this execution date 

bearing down on them, they decided that they were basically going to 

freelance. They`re going to figure it out. Never mind the protocol, never 

mind the rules. They tried to figure it out themselves.

Lawyers from Scott Pruitt`s office and the general counsel`s office and the 

corrections department, they personally got online and they said they just 

started browsing around. The general counsel later explained in a court 

filing that he and Scott Pruitt`s office, they started basically, randomly 

looking around online to see if they could figure out how long it takes for 

various drugs to kill people.

Now, remember, these are lawyers. These are not medical professionals of 

any kind who have any expertise on this matter. And when the lawyers were 

asked where they got the information that they found about how long various 

drugs take to kill people, I want to read you literally the actual quote in 

the deposition and the answer to that question was this, quote, “On 

WikiLeaks or whatever. I did my own research, I looked online. You know, 

what passed the key, WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks or whatever it is.”

That`s where they say they found the information that led them to pick the 

drugs that they picked, that were then used for the first time in that 

state on Clayton Lockett. They found it on WikiLeaks or whatever. They 

looked around online.

The attorney general of the state is not supposed to be involved in a 

process like that. Picking the actual drugs, that is not the attorney 

general`s purview. Nobody in the attorney general`s office is even 

expected to have any expertise for doing anything like that and the rules 

and protocols in the state don`t say that the attorney general should do 

anything like that.

And the attorney general, Scott Pruitt, he denied up and down for a long 

time that he or his office had anything to do with that process. No, we 

didn`t have anything to do with picking those drugs. Why would anybody 

even say that? Obviously, that`s not in the rules, why would we do it?

But you know what? There was an investigation. Multiple sources, multiple 

other actors, multiple other state officials involved in that terribly 

botched process of killing that guy in 2014, multiple people said despite 

your denials, Scott Pruitt, yes, you were involved in this. The Department 

of Public Safety in Oklahoma did an investigation into the botched 

execution.

And the director of the corrections department confirmed that a lethal drug 

in that execution were not chosen, according to the protocol designed by 

the state. They weren`t. They`re picked by the lawyers.

He said, quote, “The previous general counsel and the attorney general`s 

office that`s who chose the drugs. That general counsel who was himself 

involved in searching the WikiLeaks or whatever, for the drug information, 

along with Scott Pruitt`s office. He later explained how it was that he 

and these other lawyers ended up in that weird position which they were 

never supposed to be in.

He told investigators that basically was political. He told investigators 

that the state was under pressure to carry out that execution that night, 

particularly because it was supposed to be a very exciting double header. 

That night, it was going to be Clayton Lockett then they had another guy 

standing by who they were going to kill with the same drugs right after 

Clayton Lockett. They were going to do two in one night.

A lot of attention for something like that. Quote, “The attorney general`s 

office being an elected office was under a lot of pressure. The staff over 

there was under a lot of pressure to say get it done, you know? And so, 

yeah, yeah, I think it was a joint decision but there was. I`ve got to say 

there was a push to make the decision, get it done, hurry up about it.”

Get it done, hurry up about it. That was from the attorney general`s 

office, because it`s an elected office. He`s an ambitious guy in that 

office, and they wanted to get those guys killed, get this thing over with. 

Right?

Who cares what the drug is? Who cares if we`ve never used that drug 

before, I looked something up on the WikiLeaks or whatever. You got 

yourself a smartphone, right?

We`ll use something we have never tried before, who cares, get it done.

And that is how Scott Pruitt apparently ended up making the decision about 

a brand new experiment method that Oklahoma was going to try out on its 

prisoners that led to 43 minutes of Clayton Lockett writhing and talking 

and trying to get the needle in himself and them trying to call off the 

execution in the middle of it and him trying to get off the gurney before 

finally three quarters of an hour into it, it was finally a heart attack 

that killed him.