The family of the prisoner who died during a botched execution earlier this year plans to file a lawsuit against the governor and the medical professionals who carried out his lethal injection.
The Oklahoman's Graham Lee Brewer reports attorneys for the family said the filing of a lawsuit in federal court in Oklahoma City was "imminent" and that it would also include the manufacturers of the drugs used in the lethal injection.
The complaint, shared Monday by attorneys, also calls his execution “a violation of innumerable standards of international law, and a violation of elementary concepts of human decency.” “In a spectacle rarely seen in the ‘civilized’ world, Clayton Lockett writhed in agony, convulsed, gasped for breath, moaned repeatedly and took approximately 43 minutes to die at the hands of the Defendants,” attorneys for the estate of Clayton Lockett wrote.
Attorneys say the lawsuit argues Lockett's Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment were violated. Lockett was executed April 29 for the 1999 murder of Stephanie Neiman.
Lockett and two accomplices kidnapped Neiman, who was 19 at the time of her death, and a friend after the pair showed up at a house they were in the process of robbing. The three men took Neiman and her friend, as well as the man they were robbing and his infant son, to a secluded area outside Perry, where Lockett shot Neiman with a shotgun. After refusing to shoot her a third time, Lockett had his two accomplices bury her alive.
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