USA - Oklahoma. Oklahoma will have at least a 2-year delay in lethal injections

Oklahoma
Oklahoma will have at least a 2-year delay in lethal injections after officials declined to consider new execution procedures. Oklahoma has executed 112 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the highest per-capita rate in the nation and 2nd overall only to Texas. The state's Board of Corrections did not take up new execution protocols at a regular meeting that Attorney General Scott Pruitt wants in place before executions can resume. After a botched execution in 2014 and drug mix-ups during the last 2 scheduled lethal injections in 2015, Pruitt said he wouldn't request any execution dates for 5 months after the new protocols are approved and he's confident the death penalty can be carried out without any problems. "I want to assure the victims' families who continue to await justice that this review process will continue to be both deliberate and empirical," Pruitt said in a statement. "The protocol is a work in progress," said board spokesman Alex Gerszewski. "There currently is no timeline on when anything will be released." After the botched execution of Clayton Lockett in 2014 - who writhed on the gurney during a lethal injection that prison officials tried unsuccessfully to halt - politicians approved the use of nitrogen gas as an alternative to lethal injection. The legislature also passed a resolution seeking a public vote on whether to enshrine the death penalty in the state constitution, making it more difficult for future legislators or the courts to end it. That state question will appear on the ballot in November. Representative Mike Christian, a former policeman and staunch advocate for the death penalty who sponsored both measures, said he's disappointed prison officials have taken so long to develop new procedures and wants them to include the use of nitrogen gas as an alternative to lethal injection. Nitrogen gas has never been used to execute inmates in the US.