Oklahoma will soon begin executing death row inmates at a pace of about one man per month, with plans to put to death 25 prisoners over the next two years despite cries by critics and experts who point not only to outstanding questions of the mental fitness or possible innocence of some but also the state's recent history of botched lethal injections.
"It's just yet one more reckless move by Oklahoma," Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor, told CNN of the state's scheduled execution timetable, which she said is in line with its staunch, decadeslong record of capital punishment. "If there was going to be any state that was going to do something so obviously irresponsible and unjust ... it would be the state of Oklahoma, given the history."
James Coddington is the first scheduled to be executed on August 25. He would have been followed about a month later by Richard Glossip, who has maintained his innocence and on Tuesday got a 60-day stay of execution so an appeals court can complete its review of his petition for a new hearing.
Twenty-three more men are set to be executed through 2024, and when the executions are complete, more than half the 43 inmates convicted and sentenced to death in Oklahoma are due to have been killed.
"The family members of these loved ones have waited decades for justice," Oklahoma Attorney General John O'Connor said, referring to the families of the condemned men's victims, in a July 1 statement as the executions dates were set. "They are courageous and inspiring in their continued expressions of love for the ones they lost.
"My office stands beside them as they take this next step in the journey that the murderers forced upon them," he said.
"Oklahomans overwhelmingly voted in 2016 to preserve the death penalty as a consequence for the most heinous murders," the attorney general said. "I'm certain that justice and safety for all of us drove that vote."
Oklahoma's proposed series of executions follows similar sprees in Arkansas in 2017 and by the US government under the Trump administration. But experts say these undertakings are anomalies, standing in contrast to the continued decline of the death penalty in America in recent years.
Oklahoma's execution docket is a particularly troubling prospect, given the state's "recent history with capital punishment has been characterized by botched executions," according to Death Penalty Information Center. While those can be cases in which an inmate suffers inordinately, experts use "botched" to describe any execution that deviates from officials' prescribed protocol for a given method -- what Austin Sarat, author of "Lethal Injection and the False Promise of Humane Execution," said might be called "standard operating procedure."
And carrying out a series of death sentences in quick succession could raise the chances of a botched execution, experts said.