January 26, 2015

OKLAHOMA CITY – In reaction to the announcement that Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has joined with the lawyers of Oklahoma death row inmates in requesting a stay of Oklahoma executions, the ACLU of Oklahoma states the following:

The following is attributable to Ryan Kiesel, ACLU of Oklahoma Executive Director:

While we continue to disagree with Attorney General Pruitt about many features of our state’s flawed system of capital punishment and the secrecy surrounding it, we support and applaud his action today. His request acknowledges that Oklahoma’s controversial lethal injection protocol raises serious constitutional questions, and that we cannot continue to use Oklahomans as specimens for human experimentation now that the United States Supreme Court has stepped in to review our practices. We only wish this prudent request for a stay was made prior to the two executions conducted by the state using the same methods currently under review by the Supreme Court.

The following is attributable to Brady Henderson, ACLU of Oklahoma Legal Director:

The death penalty is the gravest exercise of government power over its own citizens. Both the US Supreme Court’s decision to review Oklahoma’s protocols and Attorney General Pruitt’s request for stays acknowledge that it must be carefully scrutinized and should never be done in a slipshod fashion. Unfortunately this acknowledgement comes too late for Clayton Locket and Charles Warner. When the death penalty is imposed, there is no going back, and that is precisely why future Oklahoma executions must be stayed while the Supreme Court reviews Oklahoma’s deeply flawed machinery of death.