Attorneys have asked a federal appeals court to delay the executions of four Oklahoma inmates while the court considers their joint appeal.
The attorneys filed emergency motions seeking the delays late Thursday and on Friday with the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Colorado.
Among the inmates is Charles Warner, who is scheduled to be executed next Thursday for the 1997 killing of an 11-month-old child. It would be the state's first execution since the botched April lethal injection of an inmate who took nearly an hour to die. Three more executions are scheduled through March.
The inmates contend that the made-to-order execution drugs that the state plans to use on them present a serious risk of subjecting them to unconstitutional pain and suffering.
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