Newspapers Are Suing Oklahoma for Hiding a Botched Execution

Much of the debate over how capital punishment is administered in America, of late, has revolved around how much secrecy is involved in the death penalty—states have tried to keep the source of lethal drugs from the public, inserted IV lines without witnesses, and, when things start to go wrong, kept the results from the eyes of the public or press. And Oklahoma, a state with two high-profile botched executions in the last year, is being sued for doing so.

Two newspapers, The Guardian and The Oklahoma Observer, are suing the director of Oklahoma's department of corrections and the warden of the prison where the execution of the inmate Clayton Lockett was botched on April 29, saying that prison officials violated the First Amendment rights of access and freedom of the press by blocking the witnesses' view when the execution stopped going as planned.

As a federal judge recently argued, executions have historically been public affairs. Brutal as it might seem, it sense if you feel part of the justification of capital punishment is to prevent other crime, or to provide closure for a community haunted by the violence that begat the punishment.

The execution room at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma has windows to a viewing area with two rows of folding chairs for witnesses. The windows are fitted with blinds.

The lawsuit, filed by American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the papers, states that by the time the blinds were raised, Lockett had already been strapped down to the gurney and hooked up the IV lines that were supposed to deliver the lethal injection cocktail of drugs. After 20 minutes of Lockett struggling, officials lowered the blinds to the viewing area, and the public was informed 20 minutes later that Lockett had died of a heart attack.

The lawsuit states that this violated the public's right of access to certain government proceedings.

Katherine Fretland is a freelance journalist who was covering Lockett's execution for The Guardian and Oklahoma Observer, and is named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, which cites Oklahoma state statutes requiring witnesses at executions and specifies that members of the press belong there as well.

"At an execution, the press serves as the public's eyes and ears," Fretland said in a statement. "The government shouldn't be allowed to effectively blindfold us when things go wrong. The public has a right to the whole story, not a version edited by government officials."

The actions by the departments of corrections and prison officials prevented Fretland from witnessing and reporting on the IV lines being inserted—which was what the medical examiner found to have been responsible for the botched execution—or Lockett's actual death, the lawsuit states. As the state could be found to be at fault for not practicing due diligence, and therefore subjecting Lockett to cruel and unusual punishment, it's easy to see why independent witnesses are important.

"Regardless of where Oklahomans stand on the death penalty, the idea that the government has the right to exercise its ultimate power in secret is one that we can all reject," said Ryan Kiesel, executive director of the ACLU of Oklahoma.

The first execution in Oklahoma since Lockett's, for convicted murderer and rapist Charles Warner, is scheduled for November 13, 2014.