From [DPIC] Oklahoma state prosecutors are pushing to schedule 25 executions over approximately two years, after a federal judge denied death-row prisoners’ challenge to the state’s controversial lethal-injection protocol.

On June 10, 2022, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set execution dates for 25 of the 28 prisoners who were parties to the execution-protocol challenge. The request came just four days after Judge Stephen Friot’s ruling that the state’s three-drug procedure is constitutional. Attorneys for the prisoners have said they plan to appeal Friot’s decision.

If granted, the request would result in the largest mass scheduling of executions since Ohio set 27 execution dates in 2017. Only three of those executions were actually carried out before Ohio Governor Mike DeWine halted executions as a result of concerns about the same lethal injection protocol employed by Oklahoma. If Oklahoma proceeds with the 25 executions, it would conduct more executions over the next two years than have been carried out by all U.S. states combined since 2020.

Lawyers for the 25 prisoners expressed concern that the volume of executions will make it impossible for the prisoners to adequately present significant issues in their cases. At least eleven of the prisoners included in the state’s request for execution dates have claims of innocence, serious mental illness, and/or brain damage. 

Under O’Connor’s proposed execution order, Richard Glossip would be the second person scheduled to be put to death. Glossip has consistently maintained his innocence, and his innocence claims are currently the subject of an independent investigation commissioned by the Oklahoma legislature. Glossip’s attorney, Don Knight, said in a statement, “Oklahoma should not execute an innocent man considering 29 Republican legislators, including staunch conservatives who commissioned an independent investigation into Richard Glossip’s case, are still awaiting that report. Those findings could reveal exculpatory information previously unknown until this point. Until everyone has the opportunity to examine the final report, the Attorney General has a moral duty to delay the execution of Richard Glossip. No matter where people stand on the death penalty, no one should want to kill an innocent man. The stakes are too high to rush this process. A man's life is on the line.”