18 January 2022 :
Oklahoma execution doctor paid $15,000 each time death penalty carried out
Oklahoma pays a doctor $15,000 per execution for duties that include performing a consciousness check and verifying death during the lethal injection process.
A top corrections official testified about the payments Monday during a hearing in Oklahoma City federal court.
The doctor, who was not identified, does not administer the 3 drugs used to carry out the death penalty in Oklahoma.
The doctor and an IV team, however, are involved in verifying the drugs are correct and in placing the IV lines.
Justin Farris, the chief of operations at the Oklahoma Corrections Department, recruited the doctor last year.
He said the doctor also is paid $1,000 a day for participating in training leading up to executions. That training usually takes place once a week and twice on the week an execution is scheduled, according to his testimony.
The hearing Monday involved a request by two inmates for execution stays.
Donald A. Grant is set to be executed Jan. 27, and Gilbert Ray Postelle is set to be executed Feb. 17.
Their attorneys complain Oklahoma corrections officials use a sedative, midazolam, that does not work the way they say it will. The attorneys argued inmate John Marion Grant suffocated to death on his own vomit because of it when he was executed in October.
U.S. District Judge Scott Friot is expected to rule on the request later this week. Inmate Bigler Jobe "Bud" Stouffer II was executed in December after the judge rejected his request for a stay.
Stouffer's attorneys also had complained about midazolam, saying its use would expose him to an unconstitutional level of pain.
Donald Grant, 46, was sentenced to death for killing 2 workers during a 2001 robbery.
Postelle, 35, was convicted of murdering four people in 2005. He was sentenced to death for two of the murders and to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the other 2.
Their attorneys told the judge Monday they would prefer to be executed by a firing squad.
John Marion Grant was executed Oct. 28 for fatally stabbing a female prison kitchen worker in 1998. Media witnesses reported he repeatedly convulsed and threw up during the procedure.
The judge was told Monday that John Grant was eating and drinking just before a restraint team took him for a shower and then escorted him to the execution chamber.
