Bottomline: Questioning the executioner

Questioning the executioner

Ever wonder where the drugs for executions come from? Ever wonder who makes sure they work? A recent lawsuit filed by attorneys for two Oklahoma death-row inmates alleges a “cloak of secrecy makes it impossible to know for sure.”

The answer is, you probably don’t want to know. Capital punishment — as any form of death — is not predictable.

Attorneys for the Oklahoma inmates have requested that a judge invalidate a 2011 state law that gave the DOC more control — and confidentiality — with regard to how executions are handled. With a nationwide shortage of pentobarbital, an anesthetic used in a trio of lethal-injection drugs, inmates and their advocates are asking DOC officials: where are you getting your drugs now, and what’s in them exactly?

They may be procuring pentobarbital from compounding pharmacies, a source less regulated than local or chain pharmacies. A Missouri inmate’s attorneys alleged Tulsa-based The Apothecary Shoppe was to supply pentobarbital for executions in that state, though it is not legally permitted to do so. The suit was dismissed after The Apothecary Shoppe agreed it would not provide the drug for Taylor’s execution. His execution was carried out as planned.

Though Americans have generally favored and supported the death penalty in certain cases, state-sponsored execution has changed along with our attitudes about death. Deaths by electric chair tapered off in the late 1970s. Around that time, Oklahoma became the first to employ lethal injection. The antiseptic, medical-injection style of execution has grown in popularity, more suited to our current cultural ideas about justice and death. In the late 1800s, as Americans began to lose their temperament for the public hanging, electricity came into vogue and, with it, electrocution. A New York electric chair was the first to kill an inmate in 1890. Firing squads never got much play, while hanging remained in routine use throughout the early 1900s.

Around 1920, gas chambers — industrial-age, airtight containers with submarine windows with vents for the fatal chemical clouds — were considered more humane than the electric chair. The gas chamber, and every other kind of state-sponsored execution, left a wake of botched executions and horror stories.

Bottomline: Lethal injection is a better bullet than the gas chamber, the electric chair, or the firing squad, we generally agree. But it’s not a perfect one. The executioner will always wear a hood. Our current state law keeps that hood firmly in place. But a human deserves to know how they’re going to die.

Fallin plays hide-the-document

Last March, after numerous requests from news media, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin released 50,000 documents related to her handling of “Obamacare” implementation in the state. She withheld 31 documents, a total of 100 papers, to be made available only after she leaves office, according to her spokesman.

“Jan Davis, administrative archivist, said she knew of no similar restrictions set by previous governors,” according to a March 1 Oklahoma Watch report. “Papers from former governors usually are made public as soon as they are processed.”

Fallin decided not to create a state healthcare exchange or to expand the Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.

Bottomline: The governor withheld 100 papers citing executive privilege. Her office claims they were private deliberations and attorney-client communications. Fallin’s game of hide-and-seek may be innocent. The docs may be emails containing private deliberations and attorney-client communiqué, as her office suggests.  But, with no previous governor ever hiding archived materials, Fallin’s withholding of docs right before a re-election year comes off as shady at best. 

State’s mental-health crisis

Oklahoma ranks as second worst in the nation for overall mental health, according to a new Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) report.

One in four Oklahomans, or more than 630,000, struggle with mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder. Only West Virginia has more residents with a mental-health issue.

Oklahoma’s figure for adults with mental illness is 22 percent, almost four points higher than the national average of 18.2. These numbers do not include those younger than 18.

Bottomline: An Okie’s brain is not, on average, sicker than anyone else’s. The real crisis isn’t in our heads — it’s in our resources. More than 70 percent of adult Oklahomans with mental illness do not receive treatment. After years of budget cutbacks, the state’s mental-health system has lost psychiatric beds and now maneuvers through a chronic shortage. Resources are stretched so thin that Terri White, Oklahoma Mental Health and Substance Abuse Commissioner, called the state of mental health here a “crisis.” Oklahoma spends about $53 per capita on mental-health treatment; the nation’s average is $120, White told The Oklahoman on March 2. Time to expand our safety net for the mentally ill, accept our invisible diseases, get right in the head.

Daryl points his bow at Tulsa

Five, count ‘em five, “Walking Dead” stars will be in Tulsa this November. If you’ve been dying to talk zombie-survival strategy or apocalyptic ennui with the stars of television’s No.-1 show for adults age 18-49, squee! You’re in luck.

Wizard World is bringing Comic Con to Tulsa Nov. 7-9. Five WD stars have signed on to appear so far: Daryl, Shane, Carl, Herschel, and Merle (actors Norman Reedus, Jon Bernthal, Chandler Riggs, Scott Wilson, and Michael Rooker, respectively).

For three days, the Cox Business Center will be packed with all manner of nerdcetera: graphic novels, comic books, movie geekery, and awkward, dressed-up tweens, not to mention an Incredible Hulk (Lou Ferrigno), Superman (Dean Cain), and a Power Ranger (Jason David Frank), among others.

Bottomline: How much is your nerdy obsession gonna cost you? A general-admission ticket is $35, while “VIP experience” packages are retailing for up to $400. Comic Cons are a geek spectacle, sure to delight hordes of dweebs and those who love them, here in Green Country.