The beige curtain separating the execution chamber from the viewing area was opened and the state prison warden, Anita Trammell, stood over 38-year-old Lockett. She asked him if he had any final words. He said "no."
The process began at at 6.23pm, but Lockett – as we had been warned – did not appear immediately to fall unconscious. Beneath a white sheet pulled to his neck, the restrained prisoner blinked and pursed his lips. At first he looked straight ahead, but after four minutes, he turned towards the witness area. By 6.30pm, his eyes were closed and his mouth slightly open, but when an official stood over him to check, it was clear something was wrong. "Mr Lockett is not unconscious," Trammell said.
At 6.33pm, Lockett was checked again and declared to be sedated. But then, during the following minutes, Lockett lurched forward against his restraints, writhing and attempting to speak. He strained and struggled violently, his body twisting, and his head reaching up from the gurney. Sixteen minutes after the execution began, Lockett said "Man," and Trammell decreed the blinds be lowered. Before they fell, Lockett's right arm was checked.
Then, in a gesture that seemed to echo Oklahoma’s fierce commitment to secrecy in the way it carries out lethal injections, the curtains were drawn over the execution chamber, obscuring the gruesome spectacle from public view. Officials picked up prison phones and left the room.
After a few minutes, the corrections department director, Robert Patton, came to the viewing room. "We’ve had a vein failure in which the chemicals did not make it into the offender," he told the assembled group, which included lawyers for the condemned prisoner, as well as 12 journalists.
