It’s been seven weeks since the last execution in the U.S., a botched lethal injection in Oklahoma that left the inmate dead from a heart attack several excruciating minutes after the drugs were first administered.
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But now the procedure is back, with Florida, Georgia and Missouri all planning to administer three separate lethal injections to convicted inmates within the same 24-hour span, the Associated Press reports.
According to the news wire, the states have declined to be open about where they got the drugs for the lethal cocktails and whether they’ve been tested.
This close-lipped process raises concerns, particularly from the lawyers of the ill-fated inmates, and especially since the slipshod execution of Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett. Follow-up reports showed that not enough drugs entered Lockett’s system because the vein where they were administered collapsed. Most of the fatal cocktail mix leaked out or was absorbed into the tissue—something that wasn’t noticed until some 20 minutes into the procedure. The execution was stayed, but it was too late. A few minutes later, Lockett died of a heart attack.
The first inmate scheduled to die since the return of the procedure is Marcus Wellons, who will be executed Tuesday night in Georgia. Hours later, at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday in Missouri, John Winfield will be put to death. Later that day, at around 6 p.m., Florida inmate John Ruthell Henry will also be executed, the AP reports.
According to the AP, Georgia and Missouri both use a single-drug injection, while Florida elects to use the three-drug cocktail.
Wellons was convicted of a 1989 rape and murder involving his 15-year-old neighbor in Atlanta. Winfield shot his ex-girlfriend (and mother of two of his children) Carmelita Donald and two of her friends in 1996 in a jealous rage after Donald began seeing another man. Her two friends died. Donald survived, though she was left blind by the incident.
Henry, who is said to suffer from mental illness as well as intellectual disabilities, with an IQ of around 78, stabbed his estranged wife to death in 1985 before murdering her 5-year-old son from a previous relationship. The murders occurred while he was on parole after pleading no contest in the fatal stabbing of his common-law wife, Patricia Roddy, about a decade earlier, AP reports.
Read more at the Associated Press.
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