Guest column: Oklahoma's lethal injection procedure is 'modern-day lynching'

Editor's note: This article contains potentially disturbing information about states’ execution methods. 

Beginning with chattel slavery, this country has a horrific history of using Black bodies for medical experimentation and torture. Today, that legacy lingers in our capital punishment system through lethal injections. This human experimentation uses controversial drugs in questionable quantities to end human lives. As the state of Oklahoma gears up to kill 24 men (including nine Black men) over the next two years, using a controversial drug cocktail that has been known to cause excruciating pain, the legacy of this method as a tool for racial violence is on full display.

Last year, many of us fought to stop the execution of Julius Jones, who was sentenced to death in Oklahoma. The racism that runs through every facet of Jones’ case is staggering. While Jones was not executed, nine other Black men are now at risk.

Many of Oklahoma’s most horrific botched executions have happened to Black men. Last year, John Grant vomited and convulsed two dozen times, with the vomit running down his face and neck as he died.

In 2014, officials spent over two hours trying to kill Clayton Lockett as he writhed and convulsed on the gurney. The state eventually called off the execution, but Lockett died of a heart attack 20 minutes later.

This abuse of Black bodies with experimental drugs and procedures is nothing new. During the era of enslavement, white scientists conducted experiments on non-consenting Black people such as trial vaginal surgeries ― performed without anesthesia on enslaved Black women.

Such medical abuses continued after emancipation. In the early 20th century, secret agreements between universities and county officials facilitated the widespread theft of Black corpses for use in medical research. From 1932-1972, the United States Public Health Service conducted an experiment on untreated syphilis, denying 399 Black men access to medical care. 128 died.

Lethal injection executions must be understood as part of this country’s history of devaluing Black bodies through cruel experimentation and targeted violence. For nearly a century, lynching was used to brutalize the bodies of Black Oklahomans in grotesque public spectacles to instill fear and reinforce white supremacy.

Later, state-sanctioned execution replaced lynching. By the end of the 20th century, Oklahoma became the first state to experiment with lethal injection, choosing yet again to investigate this process on Black bodies, subjecting them to unspeakable torture.

When designing this method, no medical professionals were involved — it was cobbled together by a legislator and coroner who later admitted he was unqualified for the role.

Oklahoma’s death protocol relies on a drug cocktail that is impossible to ethically test on human beings, undermining any claim that the practice is based on science. As a federal judge recently observed, Oklahoma executes using a “massive dose [of drugs] — far above any clinical dose ever administered.” Oklahoma’s protocol also calls for the administration of a paralytic drug that prevents death-sentenced people from expressing distress, perpetuating the racist trope that Black people do not experience pain.

After Lockett's execution, a grand jury report and a bipartisan Death Penalty Commission raised serious concerns about lethal injection. In 2018, the Oklahoma State Department of Corrections announced that after "many hours of research, deliberation and conversations," the state had finally decided to reject this method altogether. Yet incredibly, the department reversed course in 2020, announcing a return to the very method they had rejected.

Oklahoma’s lethal injection procedures are cruel, inhumane and reflect a flagrant disregard for Black life. Nearly one year from the commutation of Jones' death sentence, nine other Black men face that same horrifying fate. If Oklahoma is ever to atone for its record of abuses committed against Black bodies, the state must begin by rejecting this method of pseudo-medical, modern-day lynching.

Cece Jones-Davis
Cece Jones-Davis

Cece Jones-Davis is founder of the Julius Jones Coalition, as well as an ordained minister, speaker, singer and social advocate.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Opinion: Oklahoma's lethal injection procedures are cruel, inhumane