Cruel And Inhuman

In 1999 Clayton Darrell Lockett kidnapped and beat 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman over the theft of her truck.

After she said that she would go to the police, Lockett's accomplices shot and buried her alive. An Oklahoma jury voted for the death penalty.

Last week the prisoner was scheduled to be executed by injection. He tried to kill himself by slashing his wrist and then resisted the prison guards, who tasered him into submission. A needle was stuck in a thigh vein, which collapsed and Lockett suffered a slow and agonzing death calling out "Oh, Man." as he thrived in agony.

No doctors are allowed by the AMA to administer the needles.

The unknown drugs are used since Europe refused to export anything to assist in carrying out the sentence.

This execution was most certainly botched by the prison authorities, however GOP Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian was quick to comment, "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."

Death-row inmates are fighting legal battles to convince the court that the drugs used in these intravenous execution do not kill with mercy.

While most people in the Northeast and Pacific West are not in favor of the death penalty, the Bible Belt states support pro-death as revenge from the Hand of God and Clayton Lockett seemed a good candidate for a fitting punishment.

Other options are electrocution and shooting, but between 1885 and 1930 the Sooner State recorded 147 extrajudicial lynchings of 77 whites, 50 blacks, 14 American Indian, 5 unknowns and a single Chinaman.

A fairly diverse range of races.

The singer Woody Guthrie's father took part in the 1911 hanging of Laura and L.D. Loney from a bridge over the North Canadian River, six miles west and one mile south of Okemah.

The folksinger later wrote these lyrics; "A nickel postcard I buy off your rack / To show you what happens if / You're black and fight back / A lady and two boys hanging / down by their necks / From the rusty iron rigs / of my Canadian Bridge."

So hanging has a history in Oklahoma.

And not a good one.