Family Of Man Killed In Botched Oklahoma Execution Sues Doctor And State Officials

Buzzfeed ^ | October 14, 2014 | Tasneem Nashrulla

[lbryce]

A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City on Tuesday names the governor, prison officials, and the doctor who performed the execution of Clayton Lockett, for the “brutal and barbaric” death of the convicted murderer.

A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City on Tuesday names the governor, prison officials, and the doctor who performed the execution of Clayton Lockett, for the "brutal and barbaric" death of the convicted murderer.

According to the lawsuit, Johnny Zellmer, a family practice physician in McAlester, Oklahoma, performed Lockett’s bungled execution.

Other defendants in the lawsuit, filed by Lockett’s brother Gary, include Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton, Oklahoma State Penitentiary Warden Anita Trammell, Gov. Mary Fallin, and three unidentified executioners who were involved in preparing the lethal drugs injected into Lockett.

The lawsuit alleges that Zellmer improperly inserted the intravenous line and the drugs did not flow flow directly into Lockett’s bloodstream, prolonging his death. The lawsuit also finds fault with Zellmer accepting payment from the state of Oklahoma to perform the execution, and the state itself for using an “untested mixture of drugs that had not previously been used for executions in the United States.”

[lbryce]

1.Words like brutal and barbaric, are very much subjective and difficult to prove. Usually defendants' compensation will be based on any pain and suffering as a matter of sympathy but in a case like this where the plaintiff was a convicted murderer, there's not much sympathy to speak of.
2.The lawsuit also finds fault with Zellmer accepting payment from the state of Oklahoma to perform the execution. I don't quite see how that's a problem.
3.Their job was to make sure the defendant was executed. A condition it seems they fulfilled as per their contract agreement. A botched execution is far more desirable than a murderer who ends up spending an extra day of life when they have no claim to any such thing.

So defense attorney on behalf of the convicted murderer who ended up with a botched execution, I've got three words for you;Boo Hoo Hoo.

[norwaypinesavage]

Botched Execution???

He's dead, isn't he?

[heartwood]

If they win any money, are they going to give it all to the family of the young woman he killed?

[YankeeReb]

If they win any money, are they going to give it all to the family of the young woman he killed?

That would be poetic justice. With our current system, don't hold your breath.

[SECURE AMERICA]

Did he die?
Yes.
Case closed............

[nd76]

What are the damages here? There was a lawful death warrant in place.

How does the plaintiff’s attorney prove “pain and suffering”, particularly where the condemned criminal was judicially mandated to suffer death.

If anything, what the doctor and the other “defendants” should do is countersue for malicious use of process and then try to get the plaintiff’s lawyer disbarred for bringing a vexatious and unfounded lawsuit.

[OrangeHoof]

Define “botched”. It worked, didn’t it?

If someone botches a suicide attempt, you’d presume they lived through it.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Hopefully the state has a statute that provides that all this money will go to the victim’s family. It would be sadly ironic that this family profits from having this POS in their family while the family of the true victim doesn’t get anything.

[hal ogen]

Botched? The only thing “botched” is that they didn’t kill this criminal earlier, saving the taxpayers some money. The family of the perp are parasites.

[TexasCajun]

Karma's A Bitch!

In 1992, at the age of nineteen, he pled guilty in Kay County to burglary and knowingly concealing stolen property. He received a seven-year prison sentence. Earlier that year, he pled no contest to two counts of intimidating state witnesses.

In 1999, Lockett kidnapped, beat, and shot Stephanie Neiman, a nineteen-year-old high school graduate, friend of Lockett's other victims, and a witness to his crimes. The men beat her and used duct tape to bind her hands and cover her mouth. Even after being kidnapped and driven to a dusty country road, Neiman did not back down when Lockett asked if she planned to contact police. After she stated she would go to the police, Lockett decided to bury her alive.[5] Lockett ordered an accomplice to bury her while she was still breathing. She died from two wounds from a shotgun fired by Lockett.[5] In 2000, he was convicted of murder, rape, forcible sodomy, kidnapping, assault and battery and sentenced to death. Previously Lockett was sentenced to four years in prison for a conviction in 1996 in Grady County for conspiracy to commit a felony.[1]

[Responsibility2nd]

The “problems” Lockett suffered while being put to death were all his own fault.

He was the one who opened and collapsed one of his own veins just hours before the execution.

When the medical staff went to look for a viable vein and couldn’t fine one; well they did the best they could.

Lockett suffered a brutal and barbaric death? No less than he deserved. And - bonus - he was the one at fault.

[lbryce]

Makes me feel it wasn’t botched up nearly enough.

[Robert DeLong]

Here is an article just prior to the execution. Very interesting to say the least.

[Scoutmaster]

Let's see here. According to the lawsuit, the family's legal claims are:

• All defendants violated Lockett's Eight Amendment Right not to be Tortured. Using an experimental combination of drugs resulted in Lockett being tortured, which is prohibited by the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. A 2nd Circuit case says that torture under color of official authority "violates universally accepted norms of the international law of human rights," and thus is subject to federal jurisdiction.

• All defendants violated Lockett's Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment rights by using the drug midazolam in the lethal drug 'cocktail,' because midazolam had never been used before. Therefore, the use of midazolam was medical experimentation upon a living subject without consent in violation of International Law, the Eighth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment.

• All defendants violated Lockett's Eighth Amendment rights by using a compounded drug - the 'cocktail' = to execute Lockett. The FDA does approve compounded drugs. "This means that the FDA does not verify the identity, purity, potency, quality, safety, or effectiveness of compounded drugs. This also means that compounded drugs lack any FDA finding of manufacturing quality."

• All defendants violated Lockett's Eighth Amendment rights by conducting medical experimentation on an unwilling prisoner in violation of the Nuremberg Code, the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki, the Fourth Geneva Convention, and the Hippocratic Oath. A federal court once quoted the portion of the Fourth Geneva Convention's declaration that humans should not be used for medical experimentation against their will.

• Two defendants for violating Lockett's Eighth Amendment rights by failing to train themselves in procedures to ensure against severe pain, needless suffering, and a lingering death in the killing process.

• All defendants for violating Lockett's Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Rights by denying Lockett a life and liberty right. When Lockett was sentenced to death, OK statues provided that the "sentence of death be carried out by continuous, intravenous administration of a lethal quantity of an ultrashort-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic drug." The family claims Lockett was entitled to be executed under the statute in place when he was sentenced, so Lockett was entitled to a lethal quantity of an ultrashort-acting barbiturate. That isn't required under the current OK statute for executions, and OK didn't use an ultrashort-acting barbiturate. The family claims Lockett had a life and liberty right to be executed with an ultrashort-acting barbiturate and a paralytic agent.

• Two defendants violated Lockett's Sixth and First Amendment rights because Lockett was not given the right during the execution to access to legal counsel and the courts. Oklahoma law requires two outside witnesses to an execution, one of which may be the condemned's counsel. Blinds and a curtain were drawn so that Lockett's legal counsel could not witness the execution.

I don't know where to begin. Access to courts during the execution? FDA didn't approve the manufacturing safety of the compounded cocktail for execution? World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki?

Right to be executed as provided in the death penalty state in force at the time Lockett was sentenced to death? They may have something there.

[bgill]

Next time they should exit this world the same way their victims did.

[DoodleDawg]

Was it botched? Yeah, it was. But I just don’t see an Oklahoma jury having a lot of sympathy for the plaintiffs in this one.

[a fool in paradise]

If it’d been botched, he would’ve lived and been maimed for life.

That was not the outcome.

Dancing on the graves of his victims does no good.

[a fool in paradise]

When we capture the Islamist in the Islamic snuff videos, let him behead people. Our government is unwilling to say that is barbaric.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

A way out of this and future dilemmas is simplicity itself: that state legislatures provide the option for firing squad execution.

1) Very hard to appeal.
2) Very effective.
3) The means and skills are ubiquitous. Rifles, bullets and any LEOs can do it. No hard to get substances or expertise required beyond that.

While it would be grand to have that as their first option, they can change court procedure so that judges do not have to name the means of execution, but leave that up to the state. Or if the means is challenged, like for lethal injection, the default means becomes the firing squad. So problem solved.

“You (your attorneys) didn’t want a needle, so now you get bullets.” Buh-bye.

[Vigilanteman]

Court should send it back with the comment “We will consider your lawsuit after you’ve paid x $$$$$$ to the family of his murder victim.”