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Oklahoma Runs Out of Execution Drugs

An Oklahoma court on Tuesday rescheduled a pair of executions set for this week and next, so state prison officials will have more time to find a supply of drugs for the lethal injections.

An Oklahoma court on Tuesday rescheduled a pair of executions set for this week and next, so state prison officials will have more time to find a supply of drugs for the lethal injections.

The decision came in a lawsuit in which two inmates had sought more information about the drugs that would be used to execute them later this month. The inmates had sought a stay of their executions, but the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals said that request was moot because the state Department of Corrections doesn't have enough drugs on hand to carry out their death sentences.

"The attorney general's attestations give this court no confidence that the state will be able to procure the necessary drugs before the scheduled executions are carried out," the court wrote.

Oklahoma and other states that have the death penalty have been scrambling for substitute drugs or new sources for drugs for lethal injections after major drugmakers — many based in Europe with longtime opposition to the death penalty — stopped selling to prisons and corrections departments.

 

While the judges didn't rule on the merit of the inmates' stay request, they pushed their executions back a month — Clayton Lockett to April 22 and Charles Warner to April 29.

Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
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