Jan. 15--The U.S. Supreme Court has narrowly given the go-ahead for Oklahoma officials to execute a convicted murderer Thursday evening using a controversial drug that was involved in three executions that went awry last year.
Charles Frederick Warner, 47, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at a prison facility in McAlester, Okla., at 6 p.m. Central time.
But corrections officials, who have faced intense scrutiny over their procedures since a botched execution last year, held off until the Supreme Court weighed in.
The Supreme Court denied Warner's appeal in a 5-4 decision handed down past Warner's planned execution time, with the court's four liberal justices dissenting.
If carried out, Warner's lethal injection will end a nine-month hiatus on capital punishment in Oklahoma that began in April, when the state killed Clayton Lockett with a bloody, confused procedure in which an executioner failed to locate a proper vein for the lethal injection.
Lockett's death last year, in which he writhed on a gurney while taking 43 minutes to die, unleashed a fresh wave of scrutiny over the death penalty in Oklahoma and in other execution-performing states across the U.S.
Warner -- who raped and killed an 11-month-old girl, Adriana Waller, in 1997 in Oklahoma City -- was supposed to be executed the same night as Lockett, but his procedure was canceled as officials tried to abort Lockett's execution.
Officials warned that Warner's execution Thursday evening could take 30 minutes or longer as they carry out a newly refined procedure.
"We have no idea" how long the process will take if the Supreme Court denies an appeal from Warner, corrections spokeswoman Terri Watkins told the Los Angeles times.
Adriana's mother, Shonda, has publicly stated her opposition to Warner's execution. "When he dies, I want it to be because it's his time," Shonda Warner said last year in a statement recorded by Warner's attorneys. "Not because he's been executed ... due to what happened to me and my child."
Warner and three other Oklahoma inmates had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay the executions because of questions about midazolam, one of the drugs in the three-drug cocktail now used for executions in Oklahoma.
In an eight-page dissent Thursday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she was "deeply troubled" by evidence that midazolam might not be appropriate to use for executions. "I believe that we should have granted [Warner and other Oklahoma inmates'] petition for stay," Sotomayor wrote. "The questions before us are especially important now, given states' increasing reliance on new and scientifically untested methods of execution."
Citing past problems in executions by lethal injection in the state and elsewhere, Oklahoma has said it will increase the amount of midazolam to be given to Warner in an effort to prevent the kind of problems that plagued the April execution of Lockett.
Oklahoma officials later blamed the problems in Lockett's procedure on a failed intravenous line to administer the drug and a lack of training, but they exonerated the drugs used.
Still, officials late last year said they would increase the dosage fivefold, bringing the amount up to the same level used in other states, including Florida.
Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton at the end of December told a federal judge that Oklahoma would use the same formula and dosage that Florida has utilized in 11 executions. The Oklahoma chief described the procedure as humane.
The issue of how inmates are executed and whether the existing drug protocols lead to constitutionally prohibited cruel and unusual punishment have been widely debated since a series of executions in which prisoners seemed to suffer.
According to reports from the execution rooms, Dennis McGuire made snorting noises for over 20 minutes during his execution in Ohio in January. Joseph Wood took nearly two hours to die last year in an Arizona execution. Both procedures, along with Lockett's, involved midazolam.
Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Scott Pruitt has said the state Department of Corrections "has responded with new protocols that I believe, prayerfully, will provide them more latitude in dealing with exigent circumstances as they arise."
His office has successfully defended Oklahoma's new protocol in federal court, leading to the latest appeal to the nation's top court.
Warner was convicted of first-degree murder and rape in the death of the 11-month-old, who was his roommate's daughter. A coroner's report says the girl died with a crushed skull, a fractured jaw, three broken ribs, a lacerated liver and a bruised spleen.
Warner said someone else could have harmed the child and denied being responsible. He has called the death "a terrible tragedy."
The Supreme Court also denied a stay of execution that had been requested by a Florida inmate scheduled for lethal injection Thursday evening. The court did not explain its decision and Florida corrections officials could not be reached for an update on Johnny Shane Kormondy's execution.
Kormondy was scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m Eastern time in Starke, Fla.
Kormondy and two other men were charged with killing Gary McAdams in 1993 and raping his wife during a home-invasion robbery. The couple had just returned home from their high school reunion.
Kormondy's accomplices received life prison terms and Kormandy, who was identified as the ringleader, was sentenced to death.
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