"When he dies, I want it be because it's his time" - Another Voice

Charles Warner is supposed to be dead now.  The good people of Oklahoma planned to kill him at the end of April.  His was to be the second killing that night.  Right after they got done killing Clayton Lockett.

Except that it all went horribly wrong when they fucked up Lockett's murder and . . . well, Oklahoma hasn't managed to kill anyone since then.  

Of course, Lockett died anyhow, still on the table.  They said at the time it was a heart attack.  Then pathologists actually did an autopsy and damned if it wasn't the drugs after all.  Except they didn't go in his veins so his murder was slow and painful and lingering - even after they tried to stop it.   Torture, though we're not supposed to use that word for stuff we do in the spirit of good ol' American decency.  

But Warner?  They gave him a reprieve that night.  Still, he's out there, still waiting to be next up in the Sooner State.  And his turn's now just two months off.  January 15.  Fingers crossed and all to hope that it goes right. 

It was 17 years ago, when Charles Warner brutally raped and murdered Adrianna Waller.  She was 11 months old.  It's the sort of crime that, well, here's what Lou Keel said to KFOR-TV.  Keel's the guy who prosecuted Warner.  Twice.  Death sentences both times.

“This person doesn’t deserve to live,” said Keel. “If you’re going to have a death penalty, if there are going to be some crimes, some homicides, that are so atrocious then the rape and the brutal murder of a child has to qualify.”

On the other hand, there's Shonda Waller.  She's the mother of Adrianna.  She's not living in Oklahoma any more.  And she won't come back to see Warner be killed.  She doesn't want anyone to see it.  She doesn't want it to happen.

That would dishonor my daughter, it would dishonor me and everything I believe in … When he dies I want it to be because it’s his time, not because he’s been executed due to what happened to me and my child. I don’t want that on my hands. It makes me feel like I’m no different than him and I don’t want to feel that way.

She's not asking to have him released.  Not ever.  She wants him to rot in that cell.

“I don’t want to see him to be sentenced to death.” Waller said. “If they truly want to honor me then they will do away with the death penalty for him and they will give him life in prison without the possibility of parole because that’s the only thing that’s going to honor me.”
Waller is adamantly against the death penalty. She is a Christian and a victim of a vicious crime, and she believes God alone is the giver and taker of life.
“I can only see him spending the rest of his life in prison and dying in prison without him ever walking outside of those cell walls.” said Waller. “I don’t see any justice in just sentencing someone to die. To me, the justice is in someone living with what they have done to you to your family, and having to live with that the rest of their life knowing they will never get to walk out those doors.”

To honor the memory of Adrianna, to show how much they care about what was done to her, Oklahoma plans to kill her killer.

To honor the memory of Adrianna, to show her the respect she deserves, her mother wants her killer kept alive.

Adrianna "couldn't do anything to protect herself," Lou Keel says.  And so it's fitting, he figures, that 
Charles Warner shouldn't be able to protect himself, either.  

Stripe for stripe.
Lash for lash.
Flesh for flesh.

Really we ought to rape him first.

His family, Shonda Waller says, shouldn't suffer the way she has.

I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

Lou Keel, on the other hand.

There's a mad rush, these days, to make it a crime to hurt people's feelings.  Revenge porn. Bullying. Catcalls.  

As long, that is, as they want blood.

Shonda Waller doesn't want blood.  The murder of Charles Warner won't bring her peace.  It will shame her, offend her, dishonor her.  And dishonor the memory of her daughter.

Oklahoma, it hardly seems necessary to say, hasn't shown itself to be particularly sympathetic.  

"I have found the missing link between the higher ape and civilized man: It is we." - Konrad Lorenz

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
         Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
         For promis’d joy!

From Robert Burns, "To a Mouse" On Turning up in Her Nest with the Plow - November, 1785 

* * * * *

It's Oklahoma (wind sweeping down the plains, waving wheat that sure smells sweet, them belonging to the land) where they're really not doing so fine.

They've been having this problem.  They've been trying to kill Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner, but it's been a mess.  The two of them sued to learn what the drugs would be.  That led to a squabble between the Court of Criminal Appeals and the Supreme Court over who had a right to issue a stay while the litigation was going on.  Each court pointed to the other. 

Finally the Supreme Court issued a stay.  The governor said the court didn't have the authority and declared that he'd have them killed anyway.  (Can you spell Constitutional Crisis?)  She ordered a one week reprieve for Lockett to give the court a chance to see things her way.  Which they did, deciding that secret drugs were just fine and dissolving the stay. 

Which brought us to this evening.  Lockett's reprieve was till today and Warner's killing was scheduled for today.  So the Sooner State planned its first double execution since 1937 years.

Except.  You know, I didn't put that Robert Burns thing at the top of this for no reason.

Erik Eckholm in the Times.  

What was supposed to be the first of two executions here Tuesday night was halted when the prisoner, Clayton D. Lockett, began to twitch and gasp after he had already been declared unconscious and called out “man” and “something’s wrong,” according to witnesses.

Something was wrong indeed.

A doctor started to administer the first drug, a sedative intended to knock the man out, at 6:23. Ten minutes later, the doctor said that Mr. Lockett was unconscious, and started to administer the next two drugs, a paralytic and one intended to make the heart stop.
At that point, witnesses said, things began to go awry. Mr. Lockett’s body moved, his foot shook, and he mumbled, witnesses said.

At 6 :37, he tried to rise and exhaled loudly.

Yeah. 

 

Of course now, with things absolutely having gone south, a clear mess.  Grotesque.  They closed the curtain.  Witnesses only get to witness what the state wants them to see, after all.  But it was too late. They'd seen.  They'd heard.  They knew the bullshit.

From CNN.

Yet the office of Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin issued a statement indicating "execution officials said Lockett remained unconscious after the lethal injection drugs were administered."

Anyway, they threw in the towel.  Called off the effort to kill Lockett tonight.  Gave Warner a two week reprieve while they try to figure out how to make it prettier (and more successful) next time.

Rommell Broom in Ohio back in 2009.  Now Clayton Lockett. Two failed lethal injections. Lockett became the second man they couldn't kill by lethal injection. 

Broom's still in litigation over what should happen to him.  Lockett . . . . Well, he's cheated the hangman for good.  43 minutes after they started poisoning him, he had a heart attack and died.

I get tired, frankly, of writing the same thing.  It turns out that it just isn't that easy to kill people in socially acceptable ways.

Missouri's talking about bringing back the chair.  (Or maybe that's Arkansas.  Really, what difference does it make?)  Because there hasn't been a failed electrocution since the 40's, though there have been plenty that didn't go right.  And there is that thing about how people actually burn to death, their blood literally boiling inside their bodies.

Or maybe the gas chamber where people choke and gasp for minutes after minutes, sickening the witnesses.  Debbie Denno says that the firing squad is actually the surest and probably most humane, but we want death to be bloodless, neat, scientific.  Medicalized.

And so we do IV lines and drugs from compounding pharmacies and prison guards who aren't competent to do any of this, but then doctors aren't allowed to participate in executions - although Oklahoma actually had a doctor doing the whole thing press reports say, and you know how well that went.

We don't know what we're doing.  We can't do it right.  And it seems we don't give a rat's ass.

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And see Gideon