lonestarsooner

Given that this is far from the first time Richard has been told he is going to die only to find out otherwise, is there a possibility of an Eighth Amendment claim for your team? It appears officials didn't communicate with him as much as they should have (or at all) about what was happening.

Also: what was it like to find out - after Richard had been scheduled to die - that he was granted a stay by the Governor (who refused multiple times to do so) because of a problem with the drugs the DOC received? What do you think of the DOC's explanations of what happened in the hours leading to the stay?

So far in Oklahoma, the DOC has said this: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/courts/death-penalty-expert-state-was-blindsided-by-the-doc-s/article_776dea2d-a597-58cb-a43b-60d92d518dd8.html

DOC Director Robert Patton told reporters Thursday that an execution team member discovered that the supplier had provided potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride when the sealed box containing drugs for Glossip’s execution was opened about 1 p.m. Wednesday. He said lethal-injection drugs must be delivered to the prison on the day of an execution because the DOC does not have a DEA license to store drugs. However, the DEA has only one of the three drugs — midazolam — classified as a controlled substance.

Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control, told the Tulsa World that if the DOC wants to keep a controlled substance on site outside of a prescription for an inmate, state and federal law would require that the agency obtain a license from his department as well as from the DEA. No DOC facility at this time has a license from his bureau for storing such a substance, he said.

“They do not need a license from OBN or DEA for (storing) the other two non-CDS drugs,” Woodward said via email.

When asked about that issue Friday, DOC spokesman Alex Gerszewski said that “all of the drugs are brought to the facility at the same time for security purposes” and that the DOC does not obtain parts of the drug protocol separately.

and this: https://www.readfrontier.com/investigation/state-officials-debated-drug-debacle-as-glossips-final-hour-nearly-came/

Alex Weintz, a spokesman for Gov. Mary Fallin, confirmed to The Frontier that the idea was at least discussed or “briefly considered” when DOC officials notified the Governor and Attorney General that the box contained a different drug.

The two drugs function similarly and can both stop the heart, experts say, but potassium acetate is not listed on the state’s “Constitutionally-approved protocol” for executions.

“After the Department of Corrections realized they had potassium acetate, they did try to acquire potassium chloride and they could not,” Weintz said. “The stay was solely about the legal ambiguity making sure that it was on sound legal footing.”

The FDA maintains a list of drugs that are in short supply; and potassium chloride first appeared on the list in 2012. Drugs cycle on and off the list, but potassium chloride was listed in short supply as of last week.

Weintz said Fallin decided to stay the execution “after consulting with the attorney general and Director (Robert) Patton and the legal staffs of all three offices.”

When asked to clarify how far the discussion on substituting potassium acetate went before Glossip’s execution was stayed at 3:45 p.m., DOC spokeswoman Terri Watkins said: “My understanding is they asked ‘Could we do this? Could we do that?’ And they realized that there’s a legal ambiguity here, so let’s stop the execution.”

It's not much, but that's all I have seen so far.