Georgia, Missouri Executions Mark First Since Oklahoma Lethal Injection

Local Editor

Convicted killers in Georgia and Missouri were executed on Tuesday about an hour apart, marking the first executions in the US since the botched lethal injection of an Oklahoma prisoner in April renewed a national debate over capital punishment.

Georgian inmate, Marcus Wellons, was executed by lethal injection after a last-minute appeal to the US Supreme Court was denied.
Approximately an hour later at a Missouri state prison, John Winfield, met the same fate.

In both cases, the executions proceeded shortly after the US Supreme Court denied multiple applications from the inmates seeking 11th-hour reprieves.

A third inmate in Florida was due to be executed on Wednesday.

Secrecy laws like Georgia's and Missouri's have come under especially heavy scrutiny from death penalty opponents after Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett writhed and groaned before his death in April.

Lockett suffered an apparent heart attack and died about 30 minutes after Oklahoma prison officials had halted his execution because of problems in administering the lethal injection.

A preliminary autopsy released recently by his lawyers showed the state failed to properly insert an intravenous line to deliver the fatal dose of medication.

Oklahoma officials had injected Lockett with a secretive, experimental cocktail administered by an execution team whose identities and qualifications were shielded by a secrecy law.

Moreover, Wellons' legal team had argued that it was being unconstitutionally blocked from learning more about the quality of the drug to be used on its client and the qualifications of the officials administering it.

Wellons was the first person executed in Georgia since the state's Supreme Court upheld a law in May shielding the identity and methods of pharmacies that make its lethal injection drugs.

Attorneys for the state said the execution protocol has not changed since 2012, when Georgia switched from a three-drug cocktail to a single drug, pentobarbital. Oklahoma used a new three-drug cocktail for Lockett's execution.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Wellons' attorneys cited the Oklahoma case to bolster their argument that Georgia had not provided enough detail about the state's execution protocol.

Additionally, Winfield's lawyers likewise argued in court filings that Missouri's secrecy about where it gets its lethal injection drugs and how they are made were grounds for a stay.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team