Thank you. I'm Dean Sanderford.

I'm not a corrections official, but I'm on this panel because of an

execution that I witnessed. I'm the Chief of the Appellate Division at the Federal Public Defender's Office
here in Denver, and a few years back, I represented an Oklahoma prisoner by the name of Clayton
Lockett, who was since sentenced to death and I represented him in his federal proceedings. When
those were over, he asked me to witness his execution. So I went and I did that. At the time, Oklahoma
was using a three drug protocol. There was a sedative, a paralytic, and a heart stopper, basically. The
second two are extremely painful, unless the first one is effective, and the one they were using for the
first one was Midazolam.

We arrived at the prison. The execution was supposed to happen at five o'clock. They didn't get us into
the room until 5:50 or so, which was a sign that something was probably going wrong. We were in a
witness room. There was glass. We could see Mr. Lockett. The warden was standing over him. He had a
sheet up to his neck so we could not see where the lines were or anything like that. We could see the
lines coming in through the wall because the people who actually administered the drugs didn't want to
be there in the room, obviously. And they actually had four lines going in, so no one knew exactly who
was doing what. One person was just injecting saline, and I assume that was for the benefit of the
corrections officers who were volunteering to do this.
The way the execution went was the warden ordered it to start. The drugs started to be administered.
Mr. Lockett-

Committee Chairman: Let me interrupt here for a second.

Dean Sanderford: Of course.

Committee Chairman: Isn't lethal injection the method used in Colorado right now. So what you're
describing is what we would do if we effectuated the death penalty in Colorado?

Dean Sanderford:
That's likely. I don't know exactly what Colorado's protocol is. People use different drugs, but yeah, this
is a pretty standard way these things go. So they started with the Midazolam. He started to look drowsy.
There was an actual doctor in the room we found out later who was doing consciousness checks. He did
a first consciousness check, said Mr. Lockett was not unconscious. They continued with the drug. Two
minutes later, the doctor said, "Yes, he is unconscious," and the warden basically announced that he
was unconscious, which we took as a sign for the second and third drugs to be administered, because
they would never have put those in without the first drug being effective, because they're extremely
painful drugs. The paralytic basically makes people feel like they're drowning because it paralyzes their
lungs so they can't breathe.

So they started administering the second drug, maybe the third drug. We don't have any way of
knowing, but within a couple of minutes, Mr. Lockwood's eyes, they started to open. He was writhing on
the gurney. He was clearly tied down underneath the sheet, but he was visibly pulling up against it. He
was mumbling things that reporters in the room thought they could understand. I couldn't understand
any words. And it just got more and more violent. And eventually they just dropped the curtain and said,
"The execution had been called off." They physically removed us from the witness room, kicked us out of
the prison, and we found out from CNN that the DOC said he had died of a heart attack, which is
obviously nonsense, because the drug was meant to stop his heart.
Later we found out that the problem was they couldn't find a vein because he had tried to kill himself
the night before. They tased him to stop him from doing that, and I guess he lost enough blood that it
was hard for them to find a vein. They apparently spent a minute trying to find a vein and couldn't, and
ended up injecting these drugs subcutaneously. It caused an enormous amount of pain. It was obvious
for anyone who was there, and who knows how long it went after the curtain dropped. So I seen I'm
over my time.

Committee Chairman: Finish your story.

Dean Sanderford: But this is not a unique experience either.