Rights advocates are still not convinced the state has learned its lesson, even as it prepares to execute another seven people. 'It is important that the state is implementing our death penalty law with a procedure that is humane and swift for those convicted of the most heinous of crimes,' Governor Stitt said at the time. Three years later, the state announced its intentions to bring back executions, saying it had located a “ reliable supply of drugs”. “It is undeniable that innocent people have been sentenced to death in Oklahoma,” they wrote. The Oklahoma attorney general ordered a grand jury investigation into the state’s execution practices, and a wider bipartisan commission concluded in 2017 that the state’s executions should not resume until the remedy of a “disturbing” host of “systemic flaws”, ranging from poor policing and racism to outgunned defence attorneys and under-scrutinised execution protocols.Īll told, this state of affairs suggested Oklahoma was executing innocent people and abusing the guilty, the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission argued. The execution errors set off a period of soul searching for a state known for its enthusiastic use of capital punishment.
