Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner's executions are back on the schedule for next week after Oklahoma's high court lifted their stays, saying they had no right to know the source of the drugs that will be used to kill them, the Associated Press reported.
The inmates are being held at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and are slated to be executed by lethal injection Tuesday, had challenged the state's so-called secrecy provision, which forbids disclosing the identities of anyone involved in the execution process or suppliers of any drugs or medical equipment, the AP reported.
Lockett and Warner also challenged the state Department of Corrections' failure to divulge which drugs would be used, but the department disclosed what drugs it intended to use before the high court's decision: midazolam, which causes unconsciousness, along with pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride, which shut down breathing and the heart, according to the AP.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court decided it the state's failure to disclose its source for the drugs prevents the prisoners from challenging their executions using the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, the AP reported.
"This court holds that the secrecy provision ... does not violate the inmates' constitutional right of access to the courts," the Wednesday ruling said, according to the AP.
Attorney Seth Day represents both men and called the ruling unacceptable and told CNN affiliate KFOR that there was no way to know if the prisoners' executions "would be carried out in a constitutional and humane manner," the AP reported.
"It's not even known whether the lethal injection drugs to be used were obtained legally, and nothing is known about their source, purity, or efficacy, among other questions," he told the station, according to the AP. "Oklahoma's extreme secrecy surrounding lethal injection undermines our courts and democracy."
Attorney General Scott Pruitt applauded the decision, saying the state had a longstanding precedent of keeping the drug sources secret to avoid "schemes and intimidation used by defense counsel and other anti-death-penalty groups," the AP reported.
"These death row inmates have not contested their guilt for murdering two innocent victims nor have they contested their sentences of death, according to the AP. The legal wrangling of the attorneys for Lockett and Warner has served only to delay their punishment for the heinous crimes they committed," he told KFOR.
