it s all too secret. joining us now, zeva branstetter for oklahoma s tulsa world newspaper. thank you for being with us. thanks, rachel. let me ask you an the autopsy issue. oklahoma used to do autopsy of prisoners it killed as a matter of course and then they just stopped. why did they stop? and what medical information were you able to access to do this story given that the autopsies stopped for so long? well, we don t know really why they stopped. so in 2000, they passed a requirement that the state of oklahoma had to autopsy, of course, anybody, any prisoner that died in state custody except for those the state actually killed. it was a senator, glen coffey who did not return my phone calls. they do a basic medical examiners report in every case. some cases the law says, which is determined to be in the public interest, they actually do a full autopsy. we found that since that law was passed in 2000, they ve only done a full autopsy on 10 out of 50 inmates executed by the s
so if you re a prisoner who s going to get killed this way, in oklahoma, you do not have the right to know whether the people charged with killing you have any expertise in doing this sort of thing. like inserting an iv, knowing what to do if something goes wrong or you have a seize yure something and all the rest of it. it s also kept secret from you what exactly they re going to inject you with because the source of the drugs is secret as well. and that is some of what has been reported this past week in a remarkable and ought to be award winning investigative series by the tulsa world newspaper. after oklahoma had a terribly botched execution eight weeks ago, the paper devoted significant reporting resources to figuring out whether or not that was just an unforeseeable fluke or whether there is something wrong. whether there s something fishy or fly-by-night or subpar in some way about the way that oklahoma handles this particular state function. the investigation found that oklah
the state does not require there to be in any backup drugs on hand in case they start the execution but something goes wrong with the first batch. that does appear to have been part of what happened in the screwed up execution in late april. other states require a backup set of drugs. oklahoma does not. state also has no specific procedures on hand to determine if a prisoner is really unconscious. or what to do in the event that an execution goes wrong in some other way. there s also the matter of how the execution chamber is set up. i can t get this out of my head. tulsa world found the drugs are administered from a room that is walled off from the actual person into whom the drugs are being pushed. they describe it as a cramped dimly lit room next to the death chamber where three volunteer executioners push syringes of lethal drugs into the veins of an inmate they cannot see. the i virks line runs through a hole in the wall. the room is dim enough they have to use a flashlight to s
the room. they cannot see who they are drugging at all. if they need problems or have to communicate with the warden or staff in the next room along with the prisoner they are killing through the wall, to communicate with them, the executioners stick colored pencils through holes in the wall where two iv lines feed into the inmate s body. if you saw red, there might be possible problems said a deputy warden. but if you stuck the yellow pencil or the black pencil through the wall, then everything s okay. that s the system. and then there s the issue of autopsies. between 2001 and 2010, during which time the state was involved in several lawsuits over their lethal injection protocols, state of oklahoma stopped autopsying the prisoners who they were killing. not one in the whole decade. for more than ten years, during which time the state altered its lethal injection protocol three times, the state of oklahoma has done nothing in terms of physical examination to actually see how it is w
were shocked by what happened there. oklahoma is now reviewing that internally. do you have any sense of whether the state has an appetite to change its policy, revamp its policies? whether or not this internal investigation is expected to actually bring about changes? i do think the prison system is pretty serious about changing the obvious flaws in the protocol which we pointed out in my report. my partner and i reviewed protocols from 20 active death penalty states including hoem ho oklahoma and most of the states were frankly doing it better than oklahoma. franing was required. execution teams were required to train retunely in oklahoma. in oklahoma, they have a strap down team do a walk through two weeks before the execution and that s it. other states train to place ivs into live volunteers. we don t do that. backup drugs. the dark room with the dark situation and colored pencils is something that s pretty obvious that needs to be fixed. i think the prison system will address s