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Last week the state of Oklahoma "botched" an execution. Botched is the accepted term in the media coverage, despite the fact Clayton Lockett was executed. He just died badly, suffering for 43 minutes until he eventually had a heart attack. Oklahoma's governor has called for an investigation. President Obama asked Attorney General Eric Holder (who is seeking the death penalty in the Boston Marathon bombing case) to review the death penalty. Obama's position was a perfectly defensible straddle: "The individual ... had committed heinous crimes, terrible crimes, and I've said in the past that there are certain circumstances where a...

Killing a human being turns out to be surpassingly hard to do. This was made gruesomely apparent in Oklahoma last week, when the state tried to execute a convicted murderer named Clayton Lockett by injecting him with a new and secret mix of deadly chemicals. "Man," Lockett moaned, sixteen minutes after the injection and long after he was supposed to be dead, and he tried to get up, and began to writhe and jerk on the gurney until prison officials closed a curtain to keep the witnesses from seeing the rest of the episode. Alarm set in. The doctor on...

Last week, Oklahoma authorities botched the execution of a murderer named Clayton Lockett. The execution by lethal injection took more than 40 minutes. According to witnesses, he twitched and gasped and said, "oh, man" after officials had thought he was unconscious. Opponents of the death penalty outdid one another in expressing their outrage. It was the left's hysteria-of-the-week. In contrast, many Oklahomans were not nearly as upset. "Who cares if he feels pain," stylist April Sewell, at Hair Naturally in Perry told Oklahoma TV station KFOR. "You know, honestly, he's getting away a lot easier than how his victim...

*** Oklahoma was using a new lethal injection drug for the first time, and the secrecy surrounding the drugs had caused a protracted argument that extended to the state’s courts and lawmakers. Branstetter had been there in January when Michael Wilson was killed with a three-drug mix that had been obtained from a compounding pharmacy. Wilson’s final words, spoken after the injections: “I feel my whole body burning.” So she wanted to go to see what was different this time. At the beginning, the only thing that was different was that the execution was late. At 6:23 p.m., 23 minutes...

GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations human rights office says U.S. death row inmate Clayton Lockett's suffering during his botched Oklahoma execution this week may amount to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international human rights law. A spokesman for the office, Rupert Colville, says Lockett's prolonged death on Tuesday is "the second case of apparent extreme suffering caused by malfunctioning lethal injections" reported in the United States this year, after Dennis McGuire's execution in Ohio on Jan. 16 with an allegedly untested combination of drugs. Colville told reporters Friday in Geneva that "the apparent cruelty involved in these recent...

A botched execution in Oklahoma has become the latest in a string of incidents raising questions about the drugs being used and the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

An Oklahoma inmate whose execution was halted Tuesday because the delivery of a new drug combination was botched died of a heart attack, the head of the state Department of Corrections said. Director Robert Patton said inmate Clayton Lockett died Tuesday after all three drugs were administered. Patton halted Lockett's execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered. He said there had been vein failure. The execution began at 6:23 p.m. when officials began administering the first drug, and a doctor declared Lockett to be unconscious at 6:33 p.m. About three minutes later, though, Lockett began breathing heavily,...

Oklahoma is preparing to use a new lethal injection formula on two death row inmates who are scheduled to die in the state's first double execution since 1937. Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner both are scheduled to be executed Tuesday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Oklahoma plans to hold its first double execution in nearly 80 years, Gov. Mary Fallin said Thursday. The move comes a day after the state Supreme Court removed one of the final obstacles, ruling late Wednesday that Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner are not entitled to know the source of the drugs that will be used to kill them. The inmates had sought that information through a civil lawsuit. "The defendants had their day in court. The court has made a decision," Gov. Mary Fallin said in a statement. "Two men that do not contest their guilt in heinous murders...

An Official Declaration Concerning the Criminal Jesus of NazarethJesus of Nazareth was executed on the orders of the Roman State. Method of execution: Crucifixion. The charge under Roman law was treason, and under Herodian law blasphemy against the Temple.The evidence against this anarchist was so strong that authorities of both the Roman State and the Kingdom of Herod concurred with the arrest and execution, and Jesus was subjected to trial by both governments. And in a rare uprising of spontaneous collective justice, the mass of people who were gathered for Passover called for his execution as well. The mob affirmed...

The death penalty is like gun rights in Texas politics: Candidates don’t dare get in the way of either. But Republican Greg Abbott, the favorite to succeed Gov. Rick Perry, must soon make a decision as attorney general that could disrupt the nation’s busiest death chamber. It’s an election-year dilemma for Abbott. But in Texas, it’s one that Democratic rival Wendy Davis can’t easily exploit, illustrating the difficulty of navigating the issue in such a pro-death penalty state. Abbott must soon decide whether to stick with his earlier opinions that Texas must disclose the source of the execution drugs it...

Hundreds of people are executed every year in Iran. Balal, thanks to the actions of his victim's mother, will not be one of them. Balal was standing on a chair, blindfolded and with a noose around his neck, when the mother of the man he stabbed to death seven years ago approached him, the Guardian reports. According to some interpretations of sharia law, the victim’s family participates in the punishment by pushing the chair from under the condemned man. But this time, the mother of the victim slapped Balal across the face and then helped the victim’s father remove the...

A serial killer was put to death Thursday in Texas after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his lawyers' demand that the state release information about where it gets its lethal injection drug. Tommy Lynn Sells, 49, was the first inmate to be injected with a dose of newly replenished pentobarbital that Texas prison officials obtained to replace an expired supply of the powerful sedative. Sells declined to give a statement. As the drug began flowing into his arms inside the death chamber in Huntsville, Sells took a few breaths, his eyes closed and he began to snore. After less than...

A Mississippi woman convicted of murdering her husband was granted at least a brief reprieve on Thursday but could still become the first female prisoner executed in the state in 70 years. Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood had asked the state Supreme Court to set the execution of Michelle Byrom, 57, for Thursday night for the fatal shooting of her husband, Edward Byrom Sr. in 1999. But the court denied Hood's motion to carry out the execution, giving her attorneys hope the court will take up their motion to seek permission to file additional appeals.

"Lawyers for two men on death row in Oklahoma say the state has informed them it has a new execution protocol that would allow it to choose from any of five lethal injections. The change comes days after the state revealed that it had been unable to obtain the chemicals for its existing protocol: pentobarbital and vecuronium — prompting a court to delay the executions of convicted murderers Charles Warner and Clayton Lockett for a month. In the revised protocol given to the men's defense team, prison officials outline five possible one-drug and three-drug injections it could use to kill...

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas has obtained a new batch of the drugs it uses to execute death row inmates, allowing the state to continue carrying out death sentences once its existing supply expires at the end of the month.

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas is set to execute on Wednesday an aspiring rap musician who was convicted of slitting the throat and stabbing to death a music studio owner in San Antonio so that he could rob him of equipment.

• The executions of Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner were put off until April 22 and April 29. The state has had difficulty finding the ingredients of the cocktail used to execute prisoners. OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma court on Tuesday rescheduled a pair of executions set for this week and next so state prison officials will have more time to find a supply of drugs for the lethal injections. The decision came in a lawsuit in which two inmates had sought more information about the drugs that would be used to execute them later this month. The inmates had...

Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of North Korea, has called for the execution of 33 people for reportedly working as accomplices to South Korean Baptist missionary Kim Jung-wook....

Iran Executes Two for ‘Perversion’ Third dealt death sentence for ‘insulting the prophet’ Iran executed two gay men on Sunday for the crime of “perversion” and has sentenced a third individual to death for “insulting the prophet,” according to human rights activists tracking the situation. The head of Iran’s judiciary department in the northern city of Rasht announced on Sunday that two homosexual men had been executed for “perversion,” which is considered a severe crime under Iran’s hardline Islamic law. The executions come less than two months after Iranian authorities publicly hanged 40 individuals in a two-week period. Iran is...