News & Commentary

"We applaud the news that executions are on hold in Oklahoma until the Spring of 2016," Kiesel said. "For the next few months at least, we can be grateful that the state has put away its instruments of death."

However, Kiesel said the organization finds it "extremely difficult to imagine that during the next few months the state will be able to demonstrate that it should be trusted with the most awesome power a people can cede to its government."

"That becomes increasingly less likely with the continued insistence on secrecy and resistance to independent oversight," he said. "We hope during this sobriety from state sponsored murder the people of Oklahoma and their elected representatives will seize the opportunity to reflect on the unavoidable failure of any system capital punishment."

OKLA

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin stayed the execution of Richard Glossip late Wednesday afternoon, less than an hour after the United States Supreme Court denied Glossip's request for an emergency stay. The 37-day stay is the second in the past two weeks for Glossip. Late Wednesday afternoon, Fallin's office issued a brief statement:“Last minute questions were raised today about Oklahoma’s execution protocol and the chemicals used for lethal injection," Fallin's statement said. “After consulting with the attorney general and the Department of Corrections, I have issued a 37 day stay of execution while the state addresses those questions and ensures it is complying fully with the protocols approved by federal courts.”Gossip's new execution date has been set for Friday, November 6. Ryan Kiesel, Executive Director of American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma said Oklahoma's government wasn't doing much "to foster a sense of confidence that it can conduct an execution without botching it.""Today, the state has, once again, demonstrated its incompetence," Kiesel said. "That said, as much as this is evidence of the state’s incompetence, we are grateful Oklahoma has stepped away from the error, avoiding another potentially botched execution."Kiesel said it was "unfathomable that it took Department of Corrections officials nearly an hour after the scheduled time of execution to come forward and say there were problems with the drug protocol.""If Oklahomans had any doubt that their government can competently exercise its greatest authority over human life, then those doubts should be magnified ten-fold today," he said. "It’s difficult to imagine what was going through Mr. Glossip’s mind as he waited for his life to end for the third time. The psychological trauma inflicted upon the Glossip family may be, itself, the very type of cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the United States Constitution. We fail to understand how anyone could say the events of the past several months resemble justice for the Van Treese family or the rest of Oklahoma."Oklahoma can, and must do better, he said.

This

Story & Photographs by M. Scott Carter

By d

It's