Oklahoma To Resume Executions At Prison In McAlester

The state of Oklahoma is scheduled to execute a death row inmate Thursday evening after nearly a nine-month delay prompted by problems with the lethal injection of another inmate last spring.

Charles Warner, the Oklahoma inmate who is set to die Thursday at 6 p.m. at the state penitentiary in McAlester and three other Oklahoma death row inmates have filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to stop their executions.

Attorneys for the state of Oklahoma have filed their opposition to a request that the U.S. Supreme Court stay four executions because of questions about the drug midazolam that is to be used in the procedure.

Attorneys for death row inmates Charles Warner Richard Eugene Glossip, John Marion Grant and Benjamin Robert Cole claim that using midazolam in their executions will be unconstitutional because it doesn't reliably produce "a deep, comalike unconsciousness."

Warner was set to die the same night as Clayton Lockett in April 2014.  When Lockett's lethal injection went awry Warner's execution was put on hold.

Warner was convicted of raping and killing his girlfriend's 11-month old baby in 1997.

Attorneys for Charles Warner, Richard Glossip, John Grant and Benjamin Cole are hoping an appeal from the U.S. Supreme Court will halt their executions.

They are trying to overturn a 10th Circuit Court ruling that approved the state's new execution drug protocol.

They allege one of the drugs in the lethal injection, midazolam, is unacceptable and can't be relied on to produce a "comalike unconsciousness".

1/14/2015 Related Story: Four Oklahoma Death Row Inmates Seek Stay To Stop Their Executions

The Associated Press contributed to this report.