First Oklahoma Botched an Execution, and Then It Botched the Autopsy

Following the botched execution of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett on April 29, executions in Oklahoma, including one scheduled for that evening, were halted. The stays were hinged partially on one thing: Was Lockett's execution carried out incorrectly?

Lawyers for both that evening's execution and working on behalf of prisoners on Oklahoma's death row called for an independent autopsy and investigation into what went wrong. The independent autopsy's results were already published and the results of the official autopsy—commissioned by officials in Oklahoma and conducted by the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office in Texas—were released yesterday. Both autopsies run counter to the state's initial reports of what happened.

Attorney Dale Baich, who represents the group of Oklahoma death row prisoners who commissioned an independent autopsy, contends that the official report is still incomplete, but contains evidence of the state's misconduct. In a statement, he said:

While we are still reviewing the initial autopsy and other documents released today by the Department of Corrections, the state-sponsored autopsy confirms two things we already knew and fails to address the bigger questions for which we still don't have answers. The state's initial autopsy confirms that Mr. Lockett died as a result of the drugs that were pushed into his body, and it confirms the preliminary findings of the independent autopsy by Dr. Joe Cohen that the state's Medical Examiners failed to dissect the femoral vein. What this initial autopsy report does not appear to answer is what went wrong during Mr. Lockett's execution, which took over 45 minutes, with witnesses reporting he writhed and gasped in pain.

"It is unfortunate that during the state's autopsy, the Examiner did not dissect Mr. Lockett's femoral region. As Dr. Cohen already found in his preliminary examination, it was the femoral vein where the drugs that killed Clayton Lockett ultimately entered his body; Mr. Lockett did not die of a heart attack, as the Department of Corrections claimed."

The autopsy report notes "the presence of skin punctures on the extremities, and right and left femoral areas indicative of needle punctures, injections and/or attempts at vascular access," which supports the premise that Lockett didn't "blow a vein," which caused a heart attack, but rather that Oklahoma officials couldn't find the veins. One issue that death penalty states face is finding medical professionals willing to participate in executions.

The report notes the presence of a 5/8 inch long wound on the right arm, which "involves only the skin and superficial fat," as well as a half inch would on the left arm, also involving "only the skin and superficial fat." The examination of the left arm's vein revealed that "Hemorrhage surrounds the length of the vessel with no punctures of the vessel."

Leading up to Lockett's execution there was a lot of legal back and forth about what the state was legally obligated to reveal to Lockett and his lawyers—answers to questions about the source of the lethal injection drugs that were to be used, what the dosage would be, and how that was determined.

But even as the specter of secrecy loomed over the botched execution, Oklahoma officials fought to withhold details from the Dallas autopsy. In June, the newspaper Tulsa World requested a copy of Lockett's autopsy report, including "any reports, photographs, preliminary and final autopsy reports, and any communications with Oklahoma officials concerning the Lockett autopsy." Oklahoma officials intervened, and Dallas County officials ended up asking the Texas attorney general to rule on the World's information request.

The attorney general's office basically ruled that information generated during the Dallas County autopsy wasn't protected by Oklahoma's black hood laws, but Tulsa World reported that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a clarifying opinion last week affirming the contentions by Oklahoma officials' that certain information, like the records identifying the supplier of lethal-injection drugs, is confidential under Oklahoma law and will remain confidential.

But if the questions of "how the state determined lethal injection protocol," as well as who was in charge of administering the drugs become legally relevant, Baich and attorneys for other Oklahoma death row inmates are likely to ask for more information.