Oklahoma Starts Planning Executions for 25 Death Row Inmates, Including Richard Glossip

Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor is asking the state to schedule executions of 25 prisoners on death row.

Executions in Oklahoma had been suspended temporarily as death row inmates fought the state’s method of execution—a lethal injection of three drugs. One of the drugs, midazolam, is supposed to serve as a sedative that would render the prisoner unable to feel the pain as potassium chloride stops the heart. The death row inmates and their attorneys argued that midazolam has shown to be insufficient to dull the pain and executing prisoners with these drugs amounts to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

But last week a federal judge ruled against the inmates and determined the three-drug cocktail is a constitutional method of execution. On Friday, O’Connor submitted 25 filings with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to try to set 25 dates for executions of inmates. Oklahoma currently has 43 inmates on death row.

According to the Associated Press, O’Connor is requesting the first execution no earlier than August 25 and then a four-week interval between each execution to account for the state’s clemency process, so these executions would take place across the next two years. First up would be James Coddington, who would have been executed in March were it not for the aforementioned lawsuit.

Second on the list would be Richard Glossip, who was the lead plaintiff of the aforementioned lawsuit. Glossip was very nearly executed in 2015, but prison officials realized that they had received the wrong drug. Oklahoma officials later realized that they had actually executed a prisoner previously with the wrong drug and all executions were put on hold until last year.

Glossip has been Oklahoma’s highest-profile death row inmate because he is plausibly innocent and the details of