DOC Director Speaks Out After Execution Of John Grant

The Director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections says yesterday's execution may have been unpleasant to watch but not inhumane. He was answering reporter’s questions Friday afternoon after the attorney representing the inmate called this another botched execution. DOC Director Scott Crow said he wanted to talk to reporters to clarify what happened during Thursday’s execution.

Director Crow says John Grant had grown increasingly agitated throughout the day as he awaited word on if the US Supreme Court would lift the stay and his execution would proceed. A string of obscenities often directed at DOC employees continued as he was prepped on the gurney.

But the attention of his execution is now on what happened next...

“Once the midazolam started flowing he started to convulse two dozen times,” recounted AP reporter Sean Murphy who witnessed the execution. “Those were pretty violent convulsions.”

Midazolam is the drug at the center of a federal lawsuit. Oklahoma death row inmates argue the use to the use of the drug as a sedative is unreliable and violates inmates eighth amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment. But Director Crow says some witness accounts were embellished and he referred to the convulsions as more dry heaving, which he says only occurred less than ten times.  

“There were periods of time during the dry heaving that his upper body and head lifted slightly off the table,” said Director Crow who says he also witnessed the execution. “But his whole body didn’t lift off the table, nor did his legs and arms.”

Crow also says once that happened he consulted with the physician on site who said the convulsing and vomiting was not completely uncommon for someone undergoing sedation.

“Inmate Grant’s regurgitation was not pleasant to watch. But I do not believe it was inhumane because at the point of time he was regurgitating, according to the physician who was monitoring the process, inmate Grant was indeed sedated.”

Crow says at once the doctor determined Grant was unconscious the other drugs were administered and at no point was the process stopped. Director Crow says the execution lasted 12 minutes from start to finish.