From [DPIC] A six-day federal trial on the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s lethal-injection protocol has concluded, with medical experts for the state’s death-row prisoners citing autopsy and eyewitness evidence to call the process “torturous” and doctors for the state denying that prisoners suffered as they were being put to death. 

The evidentiary portion of the trial began with medical testimony for the prisoners on February 28, 2022 and concluded with closing arguments from the two sides on March 7. The prisoners presented graphic photographic evidence from the botched execution of John Grant, autopsy results showing that Grant and fellow death-row prisoner Bigler Stouffer suffered fluid build-ups in their lungs as they were put to death, and autopsy evidence that Grant aspirated vomit during his execution. 

The trial also featured blockbuster documentary evidence that members of Oklahoma’s execution team filled out paperwork indicating the state had used an unauthorized chemical in place of the paralytic drug required in the state’s execution protocol. The state’s chief corrections official denied that there had been a drug mix-up, describing the appearance of the wrong chemical in state execution records as “a transcription error.” And the trial court permitted prosecutors to present anonymous testimony, submitted in writing, from a state doctor who was not subject to cross-examination by the prisoners’ lawyers. 

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Friot (pictured) now must weigh the medical evidence and the conflicting testimony of experts presented by the state and the prisoners, and rule on whether the state’s three-drug execution protocol constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. His decision is expected to take several months.

The Prisoners’ Evidence at the Trial

The death-row prisoners’ case opened with testimony from Dr. Craig Stevens, a professor of pharmacology at Oklahoma State University. Dr. Stevens provided testimony that midazolam, the first drug in Oklahoma’s execution protocol, lacks the pharmacological properties necessary to adequately render prisoners unconscious and insensate before they are paralyzed by the second drug, vecuronium bromide, and subjected to what he called the “burning fire” sensation of the third drug, potassium chloride. 

Dr. Mark Edgar, a pathologist and autopsy director at the Mayo Clinic in Florida, who reviewed more than 30 autopsies of prisoners executed by death penalty protocols that employed midazolam, testified that 27 of those prisoners experienced “severe pulmonary edema,” or fluid filling the lungs. He described the sensations of pulmonary edema as “doom, panic, drowning, and asphyxiation.” Edgar attributed the edema to the use of midazolam. Reviewing the two available autopsy reports from the Oklahoma executions conducted while the trial was pending, Dr. Edgar testified that both Grant and Stouffer had experienced pulmonary edema. The average weight of an adult male’s lungs is 1,000 grams. Stouffer’s autopsy report noted that his lungs, heavy with fluid, weighed 1510 grams. Grant’s autopsy placed the weight of his lungs at 1390 grams.

Another phenomenon noted in the midazolam autopsies Dr. Edgar studied was froth in the executed prisoners’ lungs. Images of Grant’s lungs shown to the court contained what appeared as bubbles — evidence of frothing — which, Edgar testified, could only occur if “the prisoner is alive and breathing” when the edema occurred.