The Last Supper: Clayton Lockett
On June 3, 1999, at the end of a deserted country road in Oklahoma, Clayton Lockett levelled a 12-gauge shotgun at Stephanie Neimann. The 19-year-old girl was a witness to Lockett’s crimes; along with two accomplices he had beaten one of her friends and raped another. Standing in the ravine that day, Lockett told Stephanie Neimann that he would kill her if she didn’t keep quiet. The young woman stood her ground — she insisted that she’d go to the police as soon as she was free. Lockett shot her once in the chest with the shotgun.
She wasn’t dead.
But the weapon had jammed and so, as Neimann lay in the dust, moaning in pain, Lockett trekked back to his vehicle to find a screwdriver to unjam the gun.
Lockett’s second shot was fired at close range, from only a few feet away.
She still wasn’t dead.
Lockett declared that he wasn’t going to shoot her again.
Stephanie Neimann was still breathing when she was interred in a shallow grave and left to die alone in the dirt.
Some 15 years later, on April 29, 2014, Clayton Lockett was strapped down to the gurney in the execution chamber at Oklahoma State Penitentiary.
There were problems with the execution from the outset. It would take two medical professionals nearly a dozen failed attempts before IV access was established. When they finally did managed to get the line inserted it was placed in an unorthodox location — in the femoral vein, in the groin. Moreover, the line was inserted using a needle that wasn’t nearly long enough for that purpose. (In the wake of Lockett’s execution two separate autopsies were conducted, neither of which provided any explanation for why it had taken so many failed attempts to establish IV access. Apparently, there was nothing wrong with Lockett’s veins.)
With the execution already running well behind schedule, Lockett was administered a combination of drugs that was completely untested and had never been used before in the context of an execution. Despite having been declared unconscious, Lockett groaned in pain during the procedure, struggling violently against his restraints. Witnesses reported that he spoke several times during the procedure, apparently uttering “oh man” and “something is wrong” at one point.
After 43 minutes of apparent agony, at 7:06pm, Clayton Lockett died of a heart attack.
Lockett reportedly declined a last meal after being told that he “could not have a particular kind of steak”.
This still life composition features a myriad of beef products — a symbolic effort to find the right cut of meat for Lockett’s final meal. The flesh has been arranged in a precarious and somewhat haphazard fashion, echoing the clumsiness and failure that marked both Lockett’s crimes and also his final moments.
On Lethal Injection
Lethal injection — by far the most popular method of execution in the US — relies on a combination of three drugs. The first drug is an anesthetic; if this functions as intended the prisoner is rendered unconscious before the second drug, a paralytic, can be administered. The third and final drug stops the heart, killing the prisoner. Decisions regarding the specific choice of drugs and dosing for lethal injection are typically made by people with no medical expertise whatsoever and the practice involves a considerable amount of guesswork and experimentation.
The consistent inclusion of a paralytic agent in the lethal injection drug cocktail is interesting and, perhaps, quite telling. After all: if the sedation is truly effective, then it seems like inducting paralysis would be unnecessary… In all likelihood the role of the paralytic has more to do with aesthetics than it does with compassion. If the sedation fails or is incomplete then, under the action of the paralytic, the prisoner will nevertheless appear serene, even as he is suffocating.
In the case of Lockett’s execution, the sedative being used was new and untested. However, the most significant issue seems to be that, despite so much effort, the IV line was never properly established. The needle was not actually inserted into the femoral vein; the cocktail of drugs were dumped into surrounding tissue and not into the bloodstream. This error was not noticed because the femoral vein is near the groin — that area was draped during the execution so that witnesses would not have to set their eyes on anything so inappropriate as a penis.
In the aftermath of Lockett’s botched execution his brother filed a lawsuit alleging that the ordeal amounted to torture and human medical experimentation. The lawsuit was dismissed and it was ruled that the lethal injection process does not qualify as cruel and inhumane.