Conflicting Accounts Emerge After Witnesses Detail John Grant Execution

A new round of conflicting accounts over Oklahoma's first execution Thursday since 2015.

Four witnesses described the execution as painful and said he convulsed. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections said the execution was carried out without complications.

The Associated Press' Sean Murphy has witnessed more than a dozen executions the sedative drug called midazolam was used in four of them, including Grant's.

Murphy said he saw grant struggling before the potassium chloride stopped his heart.

The sedative is now the center of a legal battle challenging Oklahoma's three-drug lethal injection protocol.

An attorney for another death row inmate, Dale Baich, said these executions should not happen until the trial on that protocol is held in February. 

“Based on the reporting of the eyewitnesses to the execution, for the third time in a row, Oklahoma's execution protocol did not work as it was designed to,” Baich said.

"I pray John Grant is at peace now, and I pray his death brings peace and closure to Ms. Carter's family,” Grant’s attorney Sarah Jernigan said.

Grant was on death row for stabbing Gay Carter 16 times in 1998 while he was serving time for four armed robberies.