Federal judge opens hearing on Oklahoma’s lethal injection

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s push to resume executions, which includes four death row prisoners put to death since October, faced the scrutiny of a federal judge in Oklahoma City on Monday in a case brought by more than two dozen death row inmates who are challenging Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocols. On Monday, the plaintiffs called Dr. Craig Stephens, an Oklahoma State University professor of pharmacology, who testified that midazolam is not an appropriate drug to render a person insensate to pain. Stephens also described the feeling of an intravenous injection of potassium chloride, which stops an inmate’s heart, as “a burning fire, veins on fire, very painful.” Stephens said the addition of an opioid like fentanyl would be more likely to render an inmate unable to feel pain. U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot also heard from David Sherman, a medical chemist at the University of Michigan, who testified that other more effective lethal chemicals like pentobarbital and sodium thiopental would be easy and cheap to produce and could be made at any of several public or private labs in the state.