Within hours of a partisan vote in the United States Supreme Court lifting an appeals court stay, Oklahoma executed John Grant on October 28, 2021, ending a six-year hiatus brought on by a series of execution mishaps in 2014 and 2015. Eyewitnesses reported that Grant convulsed more than two dozen times and vomited as Oklahoma put him to death with a controversial three-drug execution cocktail whose constitutionality is the subject of a federal-court trial scheduled to begin in February 2020.
The Supreme Court’s action, over the dissents of Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elana Kagan, with Justice Neil Gorsuch not participating, came just hours before Grant’s scheduled 4:00 p.m. Central execution. Without opinion, the Court lifted an emergency order the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit had issued October 27 that had stay Grant’s execution and the November 18 execution of Julius Jones.
Grant and Jones are the first of seven prisoners Oklahoma has scheduled for execution between October 2021 and mid-March 2022. The executions were scheduled 40 days after the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma ordered a trial on allegations by state death-row prisoners that Oklahoma’s three-drug lethal-injection process is unconstitutionally torturous. Jones’ execution was scheduled one week after the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended that his death sentence be commuted based upon serious doubts as to his guilt.
