Oklahoma’s Governor Mary Fallin is promising an independent review of the gruesomely bungled execution of a prisoner that left the man violently writhing and mumbling on a medical gurney before he subsequently died of a heart attack.

Witnesses said convicted murderer and rapist Clayton Lockett heaved repeatedly, struggled against the straps, and called out.  Sixteen minutes in, authorities in the execution chamber at the Oklahoma state penitentiary in McAlester had the blinds closed so that the witnesses couldn’t see any more of what was happening. 

“This was botched, and it was difficult to watch,” said David Autry, one of Lockett’s lawyers.  Another member of Lockett’s legal team Dean Sanderford said, “It looked like torture.”  And attorney said, “After weeks of Oklahoma refusing to disclose basic information about the drugs for tonight's lethal injection procedures, tonight Clayton Lockett was tortured to death.”

Lockett died minutes after a doctor had called a halt to the procedure.  The scene was so awful, that Governor Fallin delayed the scheduled execution of another convicted killer.

“We believe that a vein was blown and the drugs weren’t working as they were designed to,” state corrections department spokesman Jerry Massie said.

That the drugs were designed to do anything like this is questionable.  US states that still have the death penalty are being forced to improvise new lethal drug cocktails, because they cannot get the previously-used drugs.  The European manufacturers are refusing to sell them to America, because they objected to having medications made for other purposes being used in lethal injections.

White House spokesman Jay Carney says the execution “fell short” of humane standards, although he expressed the administration’s belief that some crimes warrant capital punishment.