A group of Oklahoma death row inmates filed a federal lawsuit against state officials on Wednesday, arguing their executions would violate the constitution and amount to human experimentation on prisoners after a botched execution earlier this year.
Lawyers filed the complaint on behalf of 20 men and one woman in the US district court for the western district of Oklahoma against the state’s corrections director Robert Patton, Oklahoma State Penitentiary warden Anita Trammell, members of the board of corrections and unnamed people involved in lethal injection.
The unnamed defendants are a doctor responsible for inserting intravenous lines and cutting into inmates to gain vein access, a paramedic also responsible for inserting IVs and three anonymous executioners who administer the drugs.
“The plaintiffs are not challenging their convictions or sentences of death in this action,” according to the complaint. “They are challenging only the way in which their sentences of death will be carried out by the defendants.”
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