Bulletin: Richard Glossip: Oklahoma; "New twists" in the killer drug fiasco that lead to the stay of execution raise questions about the future of lethal injections: "The case took another twist on Thursday afternoon when Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt asked that Glossip’s execution — and the two other executions scheduled in Oklahoma during the month of November — be suspended indefinitely so that his office could investigate the Oklahoma Department of Corrections acquisition of a drug “contrary to protocol.”...“There are only so many times they can say something was an isolated incident or an accident,” says Denno. “If you look at lethal injection from the very beginning, there have been endless ‘isolated incidents.’ At some point, it’s not an isolated incident but extraordinary recklessness.” Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy. Yahoo News.

On Wednesday, Sept. 30, Republican Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma granted a last-minute stay of execution for Richard Glossip, the man whose name appeared before the Supreme Court earlier this year in a case to determine the constitutionality of the controversial drug midazolam as a lethal injection ingredient used by the state. Fallin issued her stay minutes before Glossip’s scheduled execution (he was prepared and pacing in his death cell, wearing only boxer shorts), after it became apparent that the final drug in the state’s approved three drug protocol, potassium chloride — which is injected to stop the heart and cause death — had not been procured for Glossip’s execution. Potassium acetate, which is another drug altogether, had been mysteriously substituted in its place. The case took another twist on Thursday afternoon when Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt asked that Glossip’s execution — and the two other executions scheduled in Oklahoma during the month of November — be suspended indefinitely so that his office could investigate the Oklahoma Department of Corrections acquisition of a drug “contrary to protocol. “Because of the secrecy [surrounding the administration of the death penalty], we can only read through the lines of what we know and read,” Deborah W. Denno, the Arthur A. McGivney Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law and a leading expert on the legal issues surrounding the death penalty tells Yahoo Health. “The secrecy is going to shield a lot of information that would be very revealing about what happened.” What we do know, however, is that this latest news in the story of Richard Glossip and his death penalty sentence is yet another variation on a theme of lethal-injection ineptitude that has been happening for years now in the United States. “There are only so many times they can say something was an isolated incident or an accident,” says Denno. “If you look at lethal injection from the very beginning, there have been endless ‘isolated incidents.’ At some point, it’s not an isolated incident but extraordinary recklessness.”...After the infamously botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in 2014 (Lockett suffered a prolonged death and was in obvious pain as he gasped for air), during which the execution team failed to follow the written protocol, the state revamped its protocol to assure the courts and the public that necessary changes had been made to fix what was broken. And yet, the slew of stays of execution show “the same level of carelessness all over again, and this raises significant concerns about this Department of Corrections’ ability to appropriately carry out executions,” says McCracken.
https://www.yahoo.com/health/new-twist-in-richard-glossip-1268977914331190.html