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.