The execution of a murderer has gone wrong, with the inmate suffering terrible convulsions in the botched procedure. According to witnesses, after a five-year moratorium, the US state of Oklahoma messed up its third consecutive execution. John Marion Grant died after convulsing and vomiting following a lethal injection. Grant, 60, was convicted of murdering prison guard Gay Carter on November 13, 1998, when he stabbed her 16 times with a knife while serving sentences for robbery and illegal firearm charges. Immediately after he was injected, Grant experienced two dozen full body convulsions and began vomiting, according to reporter Sean Murphy, who witnessed the execution.
Mr. Murphy reported that Grant continued to breathe for several minutes, during which he experienced more convulsions and vomited again before the execution team conducted a consciousness check. He was declared unconscious by the team at 4.15 pm and was administered a second round of drugs at 4.16 pm, Mr. Murphy reported. Grant stopped breathing at 4.17 pm. The Department of Corrections recorded the execution complete at 4.21 pm. Mr. Murphy told reporters of the 14 performances he had witnessed; this is the first one in which the inmate vomited. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections announced that it would resume death sentences on Tuesday per state statute when it said Grant would be the first man to be killed by the state in five years.
Oklahoma executions were put on hold following a botched lethal injection in 2014 that left an inmate writhing on the gurney and drug mix-ups in 2015 in which the wrong lethal drugs were delivered. One inmate was executed with an unapproved drug. A second inmate was just moments away from being led to the death chamber before prison officials realized the same wrong drug had been delivered for his execution. Oklahoma’s death-row inmates are now injected with an approved three-drug cocktail: midazolam, vecuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. “Extensive validations and redundancies have been implemented since the last execution to ensure that the process works as intended,” the DOC said.
“The Department of Corrections has addressed concerns regarding carrying out the death penalty and is prepared to follow the will of the people of Oklahoma, as expressed in state statute, and the orders of the courts by executing inmates sentenced to death by a jury of their peers,” Director Scott Crow said in a statement. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are currently 44 inmates awaiting the death penalty in Oklahoma. Grant’s lawyer Sarah Jernigan released a statement after he was executed. She said her client regretted killing Ms. Carter and was a lifelong victim of the state of Oklahoma’s institutions who never received the mental health care he deserved. She said that
Grant suffered from child neglect and was left to look after himself on the streets. She said that he could not put the trauma he experienced into words until the day he died. “John Grant took full responsibility for the murder of Gay Carter, and he spent his years on death row trying to understand and atone for his actions more than any other client I have worked with,” Jernigan said in a statement, obtained by KOCO. “However, we must not forget Oklahoma’s hand in this tragic story. When John stole to feed and clothe himself and his siblings, Oklahoma labeled him a delinquent instead of a desperate and traumatized child left to fend for himself. John wasn’t even a teenager yet when Oklahoma sent him to the first of several state-run youth detention facilities,” she wrote.
