Judge Rules Oklahoma's Execution Cocktail Is Constitutional

The delayed execution of Clayton Lockett continued to unfold, Monday.

A federal judge ruled the state's newest three-drug cocktail is constitutional.

The decision came after months of the state creating new protocols in its execution process.

9/30/2014 Related Story: Oklahoma DOC Releases New Execution Protocol

The 21 death row inmates behind this lawsuit challenged the drug cocktail as "experimental."

With Federal Judge Stephen Friot ruling the combination is constitutional, those involved with the cases from the very beginning said they feel these inmates chose their fate.

"It's frustrating because the people of Oklahoma have had to fund his incarceration for a long time," said Bill McWilliams, a former jury foreman in the murder trial of Richard Glossip.

Sixteen years passed and Bill McWilliams said he continues to wait.

"We're trying to protect the people of Oklahoma," said McWilliams.

In 1998 McWilliams said, as jury foreman, he and eleven other jurors sentenced Richard Glossip to death for the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese.

Glossip is scheduled to be executed after Charles Warner.

"It never was a punishment. It was a guarantee he would not get back into public circulation," said McWilliams.

Glossip and Warner were part of the lawsuit from 21 death row inmates that said the state was using them as an experiment.

"Never once thinking about their victims and what they went through. I mean there were some buried alive," said McWilliams.

The newest drug cocktail, also used in Florida, is a dosage increase from the drugs used in the delayed execution of Clayton Lockett on April 29.

Since April, Attorney General Scott Pruitt created new protocol along with a remodeled execution chamber.

"This narrative that has put into the marketplace by anti-death penalty folks and criminal defense attorneys that somehow the state is just hastily just someway trying to execute individuals is just simply legendary and fiction," said Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma Attorney General.

McWilliams said he feels it's time Glossip and the others face the results of their decisions.

"Do I want to see Glossip executed? No. It's a sad situation, but I didn't choose that situation, he did,” said McWilliams.

The inmates' injunction has been denied, which means the state may proceed with the next execution which is scheduled for Jan. 15 for convicted murderer, Charles Warner.

12/22/2014 Related Story: Judge OKs Oklahoma's Lethal Injection Protocol