The Washington Post For more states, execution means improvisation as drug supplies dwindle

By Brady Dennis and Lena H. Sun, E-mail the writers

Oklahoma’s bungled execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett on Tuesday was, in some ways, a medical experiment gone wrong.
In recent years, as pharmaceutical companies have halted sales of drugs used in executions, as legal challenges have mounted and medical groups have vowed to ostracize doctors who participate in sanctioned killings, states have found themselves winging it when it comes to carrying out lethal injections.
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Texas 'Has No Plans' to Use Drug From Botched Oklahoma Execution

By Nathan Bernier

Update: After Tuesday night's botched execution in Oklahoma, Texas corrections officials say they have no plans to use midazolam in future executions. Midazolam was the first component of a three-drug cocktail administered to death row inmate Clayton Lockett yesterday. Read more about the execution here.
As KUT first reported in February, the state has supplies of midazolam on hand. But the Texas Department of Criminal Justice says in a statement that it "has no plans to change our procedures. Texas does not use the same drugs as Oklahoma as we use a single lethal dose of pentobarbital and we have done so since 2012.”

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Botched Execution Could Renew 'Cruel' Challenges

by The Associated Press

May 01, 2014 6:03 AM ET

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The botched execution of an Oklahoma inmate is certain to fire up the debate over what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment — the phrase written into the U.S. Constitution and defined by the courts, piece by piece, over two centuries.
Convicted killer Clayton Lockett, 38, began writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow Tuesday evening after he was supposedly rendered unconscious by the first of three drugs in the state's new lethal injection combination.
The execution was halted, and Lockett died of a heart attack about a half-hour later, authorities said.
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