US President Barack Obama, in his first public comments on the case, called the botched execution of an Oklahoma inmate “deeply troubling” and announced that he is going to ask the US attorney-general to analyze problems surrounding the application of the death penalty in the US. In his comments on the case of convicted murderer Clayton Lockett, the president — who formerly taught constitutional law — expressed conflicting feelings about the death penalty and said Americans need to “ask ourselves some difficult and profound questions around these issues.”
Obama said the death penalty is warranted in some cases, specifically mentioning mass murder and child murder, and said Lockett’s crimes were “heinous.” However, he said the death penalty’s application in the US is problematic, with evidence of racial bias and eventual exoneration of some death row inmates. “All these, I think, do raise significant questions about how the death penalty is being applied,” Obama said. “And this situation in Oklahoma I think just highlights some of the significant problems there.”
The state of Oklahoma attempted to carry out Lockett’s death sentence on Tuesday by lethal injection, using a drug combination that had not been previously used in the state. Lockett convulsed violently during the execution and tried to lift his head after a doctor declared him unconscious, then died of an apparent heart attack 43 minutes after the execution began. “What happened in Oklahoma is deeply troubling,” Obama said when asked about international condemnation of the US’ application of the death penalty in light of Lockett’s case.
He said he will ask US Attorney General Eric Holder and others “to get me an analysis of what steps have been taken, not just in this particular instance, but more broadly in this area.” The White House declined to comment further on what the analysis might cover. The US Department of Justice indicated its review would focus more on how executions are carried out, rather than the issues of race and wrongful convictions that Obama said also should be discussed. “The department is currently conducting a review of the federal protocol used by the Bureau of Prisons, and has a moratorium in place on federal executions in the meantime. At the president’s direction, the department will expand this review to include a survey of state-level protocols and related policy issues,” the justice ministry said in a statement late on Friday.
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