OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma's attorney general has agreed to not request execution dates until 2016, as his office investigates why the state used the wrong drug to execute an inmate in January, according to court documents filed Friday.
Attorney General Scott Pruitt and lawyers representing death row inmates filed a joint request asking a federal judge to suspend proceedings in a lawsuit that challenges Oklahoma's lethal injection law. Both sides said the case should be put on hold as Pruitt's office investigates how the state twice got the wrong drug to use in executions.
A federal judge needs to approve the request, which comes a week after a judge put all eight of Arkansas' scheduled executions on hold because of a lawsuit challenging a state law that blocks prison officials from releasing information about where they get execution drugs. Oklahoma has a similar law, which also is being challenged by inmates.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin called off the execution of inmate Richard Glossip just hours before his lethal injection was scheduled to begin Sept. 30, after prison officials said they received potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride, which is the specified final drug in Oklahoma's three-drug lethal injection protocol.
A week later, a newly released autopsy report showed that Oklahoma actually used potassium acetate to execute Charles Warner in January, contradicting what the state publicly said it had used in the lethal injection. Warner had originally been scheduled for execution in April 2014 — the same night as Clayton Lockett, who writhed on the gurney, moaned and pulled up from his restraints before dying 43 minutes after his initial injection.