Convulsions and vomiting after execution of the death penalty in Oklahoma | Abroad

What the state didn’t say: Grant was said to have had more than 20 convulsions and vomiting before he died. Several media witnesses stated this afterwards, including Sean Murphy of The Associated Press.

Wrong medicines

In 2014 and 2015, the execution of the death penalty in Oklahoma went wrong three times because the wrong drugs were used for the injections at the time. The state then imposed a moratorium on executions. At the time, this included the drug Midazolam. In another execution, the drug cocktail was accidentally injected into the executed’s muscle tissue, rather than into a vein, causing the man to die only after 40 extremely painful minutes.

Grant was sentenced to death for killing a prison worker in 1988 while incarcerated for another crime. According to his lawyer, he himself was a victim of violence, both at home as a child and at the hands of Oklahoma’s juvenile detention system, and was denied mental health care.

Julius Jones

The US Supreme Court’s last-minute intervention also means that another death row inmate, Julius Jones, will be executed on November 18. The black Jones was sentenced to death for the murder of a white insurance salesman. He has maintained his innocence for two decades in a case that has attracted the attention of celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and American football player Baker Mayfield and anti-death penalty activists.

The planned executions run counter to trends in most US states, where the use of the death penalty is declining. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks executions, 36 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia have either abolished the death penalty or have not executed executions in the past decade.

Thirteen executions

However, conservative states, including Texas and Missouri, have bucked that trend, as has the conservative administration of former President Donald Trump, which resumed federal executions in 2020 after a 17-year hiatus. Since then, the federal state has executed 13 prisoners.

However, following President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, the Justice Department issued a moratorium on federal executions. Since then, federal prosecutors have dropped demands for the death penalty in seven cases.

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