Imagine this: You need a vacation, badly, and decide to treat yourself to a good one. You're waiting to board your flight when you hear your name called over the PA system and go to the counter to find out why.

    TSA officers meet you at the counter, escort you to a room and tell you to wait. Then, they tell you that you're under arrest on a Texas fugitive warrant.

    "But I've never been to Texas!"

    They pay no attention to your protests and handcuff you to a chair. Minutes later, police arrive and take you to jail, where you stay for almost 2 weeks until your family and the lawyers they hired get you out.

    It happened to Bethany Farber at the Los Angeles International Airport. Now, she's suing Los Angeles.

    "I just kept insisting that they check," Farber said, "that they double-check because they had the wrong person, and I made that very clear. I told them over and over again, and they just completely blew me off."

    Her lawsuit alleges that she was kept unsanitary conditions and saw feces being thrown and smeared on walls. Her lawyer, Rodney Diggs, said she "had to spend her nights in a cold jail cell, listening to voices of other inmates screaming, crying, she saw fights within her cell, she saw fights in the common areas of the jail."

    According to Diggs, the Los Angeles Police Department failed to check her birth date, her social security number, her fingerprints, her middle name, or compare her features with a photo of the actual fugitive.

    Meanwhile, her family hired lawyers in both Texas and California. The lawsuit alleges that after about 11 days, the Los Angeles authorities received notice from Texas that they were holding the wrong person but still kept her locked up another 3 days.

    Finally, the family managed to convince the authorities to release Farber by using her cellphone's GPS records to prove she wasn't in Texas at the time of the crime. Farber praised her family: "They were fighting for me every day." But what would have happened if Farber's family had not worked tirelessly and hired attorneys in two states?

    "There's a lot of people out there who this is happening to who don't have anyone advocating for them," Farber said. "They don't have their family fighting for them every day, and every day that they're in jail, wrongfully, their lives are being dismantled."

    When asked about the matter, the LAPD answered that it does not comment on pending litigation.

    However, Farber had something more to say: "It could happen to anyone." 

    In November 1014, a deputy sheriff in Martin County, Florida stopped David Sosa and checked his driver's license.  According to the database, a county in Texas had issued an arrest warrant for a David Sosa.

    The deputy took Sosa into custody.  Sosa spent several hours at the sheriff's department before the officers confirmed that he wasn't the man Texas wanted.  They released him.

    In April 2018, the same thing happened.  Sosa protested that the deputies had made this mistake three years earlier. However, a jail employee told him they had no records of the previous arrest.  Noneless, he spent 3 days in jail before being released.

    How long would they keep him in jail the next time.  To foreclose that possibility, Sosa sued the sheriff's department in federal court.  The lawsuit alleged false arrest and overdetention.  It also alleged that the sheriff's department had failed to train the deputies and had failed to keep adequate records.

    The district court dismissed the lawsuit based on the doctrine of qualified immunity.  Sosa appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.  In September 2021, a three-judge panel affirmed the District Court's dismissal of the allegations of false arrest and failure to train and keep records.  However, the Court held that the doctrine of qualified immunity did not bar Sosa's overdetention claim.

    But that partial victory may be short-lived.  In January of this year, the entire court voted to vacate the panel's decision.  The case will now be decided by the full court.

In 2018, when Brookside, Alabama hired Mike Jones (above) as its police chief, the town had only one full–time officer: Jones. He recently quit, leaving a force with about 9 full–time cops and some part–timers.

How could a town of less than 1,500, with only one retail business - a Dollar General store - afford a police department that large? By writing tickets and by seizing property under the state's civil asset forfeiture law.

Between 2018 and 2020, total revenue from fines increased 640 percent.  In 2020, fines and forfeitures raked in $640,000, more than half the town's budget.

Chief Jones has denied that the police department relies on this revenue but it's difficult to follow the money. Accountants who audited the town report that it doesn't have a written budget.

Jones has been quoted as saying "We don't like writing tickets."  But he also has expressed disappointment that the town is not collecting more.

"I see a 600 percent increase – that's a failure," he told a reporter for AL.com. "If you had more officers and more productivity you'd have more. I think it could be more."

Interstate Highway 22 goes through this Birmingham exurb, but reportedly, the Brookside officers also ticket Interstate drivers outside that 1.5 mile stretch. Jefferson County Sheriff Mark Pettway said that his office receives calls about Brookside officers going outside their jurisdiction to stop motorists: "Most of the time people get stopped they're going to get a ticket. And they're saying they were nowhere near Brookside."

John Archibold, a columnist at Alabama.com, reported that there is actually a state law prohibiting police in small towns from issueing speeding tickets to motorists on an Interstate highway. (The law passed after a state legislator got ticketed in a speed trap.) 

According to Archibold, the Brookside police get around this restriction by issuing tickets for other violations, such as driving too long in the left lane or having a light out. Reportedly, sometimes they make up a violation.

The county's district attorney, Danny Carr, said that a driver going through the town could "fall into a black hole" financially.  New reports describe instances in which Brookside police ticketed drivers for violations they did not commit and even for offenses that did not exist in the law.

The Brookside police harvest additional cash from imarijuana law enforcement.  One lawyer said that when an officer pulled over his client and found a joint in the car, Brookville charged the man not only with possession of marijuana but also with multiple counts of possessing drug paraphernalia. The paraphernalia: a plastic bag which held the cannabis, a jar that once held it, rolling papers, and cigar wraps.

Another lawyer, Bill Dawson, said that when the police caught his client with a joint, they charged him with one count of marijuana possession and with a separate count for drug paraphernalia, meaning the cigarette paper around it.

Reportedly, while drivers are in court paying their traffic fines, Brookside cops are outside walking drug-sniffing dogs around the motorists' cars.  The police department has two such dogs.  One is name "K9 Axel" and the other, tellingly, "K9 Cash."

Jpmes , who wore 4 stars on his uniform, used a lot of this revenue to build his conception of a big city police force.  The Brookside Police Department website bragged that "since accepting the position of Chief of Brookside [Jones] has created a full time police department, with multiple divisions all while still serving the community with his team."  The tiny department even obtained a riot control vehicle on loan from a state agency.

Incidentally, one statement on the police department website should be mentioned simply because of its irony.  The website claimed that the police department's patrol division was "dedicated to serving the community of Brookside, you will see these wonderful men and women responding to calls for service and taking proactive steps to ensuring your safety and prosperity."  Uh, whose prosperity?

Officers do not wear Brookside insignia.  At least sometimes, they have signed tickets not with their names but with the word "Agent" followed by the officer's initials.

Agents "J" and "K"

Retired Birmingham police officer Montague Minnifield, who is black, was riding in the passenger seat when Brookfield police pulled over his girlfriend, who was driving.  Supposedly, her license plate light was not working.

According to Minnifield, one officer approached on the driver's side and another on his side of the car.  They were dressed in dark uniforms and wore masks.

The officer who tapped on the passenger-side window identified himself as "Agent J."

Minnifield replied, "Agent J? I guess this guy over here is agent K, huh?"  When the man agreed Minnifield said, "Oh really? So y’all are the men in black now, huh?"

Even though Minnifield was in the passenger's seat, the officer asked him for his driver's license, but Minnifield did not have it with him.  The officer said that unless Minnifield provided the license, he would be arrested.

The Brookside officers removed Minnifield from the car, cuffed him, put him in the back of their patrol car in a "stress position," and left him there for half an hour before releasing him without charging him with anything.  The officers did write a ticket for the nonworking license plate light.

Allegations of Racism

Plaintiffs have filed at least 5 lawsuits Brookside and its police department. Allegations include racism and retaliation. Rev. Vincent Witt alleges that while he was driving through Brookside in a new car with a temporary license tag, an officer pulled him over. According to the lawsuit, when Witt asked a question, the officer replied "Look, you f****** n*****, just stay out of Brookside."

Witt called the police department and complained. Later, Witt and his sister were arrested and charged with impersonating police officers. However, his sister had not even been in the car when Witt was stopped. The Brookside police department posted mugshots of both Witt and his sister on its website. 

Later, Brookside dropped the charges and removed the photographs from its webpage. After Witt sued, Brookside defended by asserting qualified immunity. However, the judge denied immunity for all the alleged conduct except the initial traffic stop.

A court decides the qualified immunity issue before trial because a grant of immunity spares the defendants not only from having to pay damages but also from the burden of going to trial. At the pretrial stage, to decide the motion, the judge assumes the allegations are true.

In denying immunity, the judge called the alleged conduct reprehensible, harkening "back to the dark period in our nation's history when officers displayed racist tendencies and weaponized their badges to keep minorities from certain communities under the guise of 'law enforcement.'"

Public Complaints

The lawsuits, and news stories and news stories have put Jones in the public eye. On February 1, 2022, more than 200 people attended a meeting hearing complaints about the Brookside police.  At the meeting, Brookside's mayor announced that the town had retained a former circuit court judge to investigate allegations of racial profiling.

Shortly after that meeting, Chief Jones resigned. As of this writing, however, his picture remained posted on the Brookside police department's website.

Recently, both Republicans and Democrats in Alabama have promised to take action about policing in Brookside.  Lieutenant Govenor Will Ainsworth, a Republican, pledged, "We're going to get something done on that." Options include prohibiting police departments from receiving revenue from the tickets its officers issue.

Speed Traps Galore

It's worth mentioning that Brookside isn't the only Alabama town to operate a speed trap.  In fact, Brookside only ranked sixth on a recent list.  And here is a list not limited to Alabama.

In 1958, Alfred Hitchcock Presents aired an episode about a speed trap. It will make you angry until the last scene. You can watch it free online.

 

Screenshots from "The Crooked Road." Other photographs from the Brookside, Alabama, Police Department Website.

By K. W. Locke

Here are some links to organizations working to help those harmed by the criminal justice system.  Neither I nor this blog is affiliated with any of these organizations and they do not pay us in any way for listing them here.  I haven't even informed most of them that they are being listed.

 

 

Law schools across the country, and elsewhere, have established innocence projects to exonerate those wrongfully convicted.  You can locate the innocence project near you using the Innocence Network's online directory.

 

The oldest organization working to exonerate those wrongly convicted may well be Centurion Ministries, founded not by a law school but by Princeton University divinity student Jim McCloskey.  You can read about it in McCloskey's memoir, When Truth Is All You Have.  Reportedly, writer John Grisham patterned the main character in his novel, The Guardians, after McCloskey.

 

 

After the McKinney, Texas SWAT team caused $50,000 to a woman's home and the city refused to compensate her, the Institute for Justice sued on her behalf.  When the Pasco County, Florida sheriff's department began using a computer to predict who would commit a crime, and then harassing those people until they moved away, the Institute for Justice sued the sheriff.  It also fights on behalf of victims of civil asset forfeiture, whose property has been taken by law enforcement even though they have not been convicted of any crime.

 

Laws schools at the University of California - Irvine, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University have established the online National Registry of Exonerations.  It lists innocent people  who were convicted and sent to prison, but only later cleared.  It also provides information about each case.  So far, 2,932 innocent people, who together spent more than 25,600 years behind bars for crimes they didn't commit, appear on the list.

Banner photo by Juliescribbles (https://www.scribbler.com/) via Wikimedia Commons.

Here's more proof that no good deed goes unpunished.

In May 2012, Louisville police arrested a man suspected of firing a shotgun into the home of a confidential police informant.  Detective Barron Morgan interviewed the suspect, whose brother was facing federal drug charges.  Hoping to get his brother a more lenient sentence, the suspect confessed to murdering a man, Kyle Breeden, 14 years earlier.

In November 1998, fishermen had found Breeden's body in a river near Gratz, Kentucky.  Breeden had been shot twice in the head.  His legs had been tied with a guitar amplifier cord.

The murderer explained that Breeden had stolen $20 from him to buy cocaine.  However, he added that he really had killed the man "just to do it."

Various details of the story fit the evidence.  For example, the murderer said that he had gone to Breeden's trailer and found him smoking cocaine.  An autopsy had found cocaine in Breeden's blood.

The murderer said he had lied to Breeden, inviting him to attend a birthday party at his father's home.  On the way, he said, they stopped at a finance company, where Breeden got about $200.  This fact, too, checked out.  Records established that Breeden had taken out a $250 loan.

The two then drove to an abandoned farmhouse which the murderer told Breeden was his father's.  Breeden walked ahead to the gate and likely did not see the pistol aimed at the back of his head.   "I blowed his fuckin' brains out," the murderer told police.

He dragged Breeden's body to the side of the house and left.  However, he came back later to dispose of the body.  He drove to the Gratz bridge and heaved the body, with a 40–pound weight tied on, into the Kentucky River.

 Cold case solved!  But there was a problem.

A woman was in prison, serving time for the killing.

In 2008, a hairdresser who had known Breeden, entered into a plea bargain with the prosecutor.  Susan King, although innocent, got bad legal advice.  Rather than chance a whole lifetime in prison, she made a deal which resulted in her spending 6-1/2 years behind bars for manslaughter.

King entered an "Alford plea," which is similar to pleading nolo contendere or "no contest."   King did not admit guilt but only agreed that the prosecution had enough evidence to prove she committed the crime.

If King could have afforded a good lawyer and entered a not guilty plea, a jury almost certainly would have acquitted.  The murder victim weighed about 180 pounds.  King weighs around 100 and has only one leg.

At the time of the murder, King didn't even have a prosthesis.  She relied on crutches or used a wheelchair.

Yet somehow, King supposedly had killed Breeden, dragged his body to her car, driven 40 miles, and then heaved it into the river.  Really?  With a 40–pound weight attached to hold the body down?

In 1998, when Kentucky State Police first investigated the case, King wasn't charged.  But 8 years later, another officer got involved.  State Police Lieutenant Todd Harwood (who was then a sergeant) became convinced that King was guilty.

According to a lawsuit which King later filed against Harwood, the state police detective misled a grand jury, concealed evidence, and threatened King with the death penalty if she did not plead guilty.  Harwood reportedly settled this lawsuit by agreeing to pay King $750,000.

But at the time the true killer confessed to Louisville detective Morgan, King remained in prison.

After checking with his supervisor and the local prosecutor, Morgan notified the Kentucky Innocence Project about the confession.  With the documentation provided by Morgan, the Innocence Project ultimately secured King's exoneration.

An agency of state government, the Commonwealth's Department of Public Advocacy, had established the Kentucky Innocence Project to do precisely that: To right the terrible wrong which occurs when the justice system finds the wrong person guilty.

So, it should have been okay for Detective Morgan to communicate with this state agency, right?

It should have been.  Morgan had served justice and helped right a wrong.

But in fact, Morgan's good deed upset a lot of people, including the state cop who had put King behind bars.  State Police Lieutenant Harwood visited the real murderer in jail and, Morgan suspects, convinced him not to cooperate.  The murderer recanted his confession.

Harwood has denied telling the murderer to keep his mouth shut.  However, we don't know what was said because the lieutenant lost the tape recorder.

Obviously, if Harwood misled the grand jury and tried to intimidate King into a plea deal, he would have a reason to try to squelch a new inquiry.  But why didn't his superiors in the State Police support a fresh investigation?

They went tribal, trying to stop the Louisville Police Department from treading on their turf.  A state police commander contacted a high–ranking official in the Louisville Police Department and complained about Morgan "interfering" in a state police matter.

Reportedly, the Louisville police chief and the head of the Kentucky State Police were longtime friends.  That might help explain the reaction of those in command.

A major in the Louisville department apologized to the state police for Morgan's "sticking his nose" into one of their cases.  The major also urged that Morgan be subjected to a disciplinary investigation.

According to Morgan, a lieutenant colonel in the Louisville department left a voicemail message cursing Morgan for providing information to "the other side" – the Kentucky Innocence Project – and ordered him to stop doing so.  In a deposition, the lieutenant colonel admitted asking Morgan about the Innocence Project's involvement.  Although this official could not recall cursing Morgan, he testified that if he did, it was in a "joking manner."

Morgan also received orders not to appear in court on the King matter unless subpoenaed.

In the past, Morgan's superiors had praised him.  A month before the murderer confessed to Morgan, the detective received a letter from the Louisville police chief commending his work on a case involving half a million dollars of cocaine.

But just a few months later, a "departmental reorganization" resulted in Morgan no longer being a narcotics detective.  Instead, he was assigned to be a patrol officer on the graveyard shift. 

Morgan filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the Louisville Police Department.  He received a $450,000 settlement, but the department would not return him to the narcotics unit.

In June 2020, the police chief lost his job shortly before his scheduled retirement.  However, he wasn't fired for demoting Morgan.

Two months before the chief's ouster, Louisville officers executing a no-knock warrant entered the home of Breonna Taylor, allegedly without identifying themselves.  The raid resulted in Taylor's death.

Large protests resulted.  So did an order requiring police to wear body cameras.

In late May, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd.  The news prompted demonstrations nationwide, including in Louisville.

The governor of Kentucky called out the National Guard to assist the Louisville police.  In an incident which took place some distance from downtown, a member of the Guard shot and killed a barbecue cook, David McAtee, who reportedly had fired on the soldiers.

Two of the Louisville officers on the scene either did not have bodycams or had not activated them.  The officers were suspended and the police chief removed.

Sometime is wrong with the culture of a police department in which officers ignore an order to wear and use bodycams.  And something is very seriously wrong with the culture of a department which punishes a detective for telling a state agency that an innocent woman is in prison.

 

STATE UNLIKELY TO COMPENSATE STRICKLAND

By K. W. Locke

It took a lot of lawyers to free an innocent man.  In 1979, Kevin Strickland went on trial in Kansas City for a triple murder perpetrated by four attackers.  The prosecution charged that Strickland was one of the four.

The jury could not reach agreement on a verdict and the judge declared a mistrial.   At the second trial a jury convicted Strickland, based on a mistaken identification by a witness who survived the attack.

The witness did not realize she had pointed to the wrong man until after Strickland's conviction, when two of the actual murderers confessed.  One of them bore a resemblance to Strickland.

The real killers stated that Strickland had not been involved.  Nonetheless, Strickland remained in prison, his appeals denied.

In 2020, lawyers from the Midwest Innocence Project teamed up with three attorneys from a prestigious international law firm, who donated their services.   They assembled the evidence indicating that Strickland was innocent and took it to the prosecuting attorney for Jackson County, Missouri, which includes Kansas City.

The prosecuting attorney, Jean Peters Baker, became convinced of Strickland's innocence and joined the effort to exonerate him.   Ethically, a prosecutor's duty is not merely to try to convict the guilty but to do justice.  However, it is rare to see a proscutor work hard to free someone already convicted and in prison.

A previous post explained how Peters actually did more than Missouri's canon of legal ethics requires.  Some states have adopted ethical codes requiring a prosecutor to seek to undo a conviction if there is clear and convincing evidence that the defendant was innocent.  Missouri does not.   Peters did it anyway.

She supported the Innocence Project's attempt to get the Missouri Supreme Court to overturn Strickland's conviction.  The Court did not.   That result was not too surprising, considering that Missouri did not have a law specifically allowing the Court to  act.

However, the Missouri legislature had enacted a new statute allowing prosecutors to return to the court which convicted a defendant and ask the court to undo it.   When the law took effect in August 2021, Peters filed a 25-page motion.

The Missouri attorney general opposed Peters, disputing that there was clear and convincing evidence of Strickland's innocence.  After a 3-day hearing, the judge ruled that Strickland did not commit the crime and ordered his release from prison.

On November 23, Strickland became a free man for the first time in 43 years.   However, it is unlikely that the state will compensate Strickland for those years.   Missouri law allows such compensation in very few cases, and Strickland's exoneration was not based on DNA evidence.

In contrast, an innocent man recently pardoned in North Carolina may receive up to $750,000 for his wrongful imprisonment.

In 1994, because a witness lied on the stand, a North Carolina jury convicted 19-year-old Montoyae Dontae Sharpe of murder.   Weeks later, the witness admitted she had lied but Sharpe remained behind bars for a quarter century.

In 2019, a court overturned Sharpe's conviction and the prosecution dropped the charges.  However, that did not qualify Sharpe to receive compensation from the state.

On November 12, 2021, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper granted Sharpe a "pardon of innocence."  Cooper now is eligible to receive $50,000 for each year he spent in prison, up to a total $750,000.

JONES TO SERVE LIFE IN PRISON WITHOUT PAROLE

By K. W. Locke

When Thursday morning dawned, Julius Jones had an appointment with death. He would meet it at 4:00 that afternoon in the execution room of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Jones consistently has denied committing the murder for which he was sentenced to die. The Innocence Project took up his case and Kim Kardashian ralied public support. The family of the murder victim believes Jones is guilty.

Both sides presented their arguments at a September 13, 2021 meeting of the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board. which then recommended that Governor Kevin Stitt commute Jones' sentence to life in prison with the possibility of parole. However, Stitt was not satisfied and asked for another hearing, specifically focused on clemency.

On November 1, 2021 the parole board conducted the clemency hearing and again recommended that the governor commute Jones' sentence. But the governor took no action. The silence seemed ominous. 

On November 17, the day before the scheduled execution, Jones' mother went to the governor's office, but he refused to see her.  That refusal seemed even more ominous.

Just 4 hours before Jones' appointment with death the governor canceled it. But although the parole board twice had recommended that Jones' sentence be commuted to life with the possibility of parole, the governor only gave him life without parole. Still, Jones is alive.

In 1988, a Memphis jury found Pervis Payne guilty of murdering a 28-year-old woman and her 2-year-old daughter. It sentenced him to death. Payne has maintained that he was innocent and many believe him.

Defense attorneys say that police investigators focused on Payne and ignored the person they believe committed the crime, the victim's ex-husband, who had a history of violence. They also argue that racial bias and Payne's low IQ tilted the scales against him.

Both Tennessee and federal courts have held that it is unconstitutional to execute a mentally disabled person, but up until now, prosecutors have not conceded that Payne met that standard. A new Tennessee law gave Payne a new opportunity to raise the mental disability issue.

Recently, a state expert who reviewed Payne's records "could not say Payne's intellectual functioning is outside the range for intellectual disability." In the absence of a clearcut pronouncement that Payne absolutely, unequivocally met the standard, many prosecutors would have argued that Payne should be executed. But not District Attorney General Amy Weirich. She decided that Payne should be taken off death row and will concede in court that Payne should not be executed.

Payne's lawyer said that the district attorney general's concession will "avoid years of needless litigation." 

Of course, taxpayers would foot the bill for the litigation. The district attorney general deserves a double round of thanks: First, for having the courage to do justice and second, for saving tax dollars.

Although Payne is off death row he is still in prison, serving two life sentences.  Payne's lawyer said efforts will continue to prove that his client did not commit the crime.

JULIUS JONES WAITS ON DEATH ROW

by K. W. Locke

Why is it taking Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt so long to decide whether Julius Jones will die on November 18?

In 2002, a jury found that Jones had killed a man and sentenced him to death. Jones consistently has maintained that he is innocent and that his inexperienced attorney failed to call alibi witnesses at his trial. The ABC television network aired a documentary about the case and Kim Kardashian has taken up his cause.  Lawyers at the Innocence Project, similarly convinced that Jones didn't commit the crime, brought his case before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board.

But others, including some members of the victim's family, believe that Jones is guilty.  When the parole board met two months ago, they argued that Jones deserved to die.

At the conclusion of its September 13 hearing, the parole board voted to recommend that the governor reduce Jones' sentence from death to life in prison with the possibility of parole. But in Oklahoma, the parole board only can recommend, and the governor is free to reject the recommendation.

Governor Stitt neither adopted nor rejected this recommendation. Instead, he asked for another hearing. The September 13 hearing had been a parole hearing. The governor wanted the board to hold a clemency hearing. At such a hearing, Jones himself would be allowed to speak.

 On November 1, the parole board held the clemency hearing.  Again, it recommended that Gov. Stitt commute Jones' sentence from death to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole. As of this writing, the governor has not made a decision. The November 18 execution date draws closer and closer.

People concerned that an innocent man may be put to death have been writing letters (such as this one) to the governor.

Apart from the issue of Jones' innocence is the matter of execution Oklahoma style. Although Oklahoma was the first state to enact a law providing for execution by lethal injection, it's not very good at it.

When it executed Clayton Lockett in 2014, the phlebotomist inserting the IV needle made a mistake. Instead of going into the Lockett's bloodstream, the lethal drugs infused surrounding tissue.  Lockett regained consciousness, moaned and struggled. More than 40 after the execution began, he died from a heart attack. 

The next year, the execution team administered the wrong drug to Charles Warner. Lying on the gurney, Warner said it "feels like acid."

Witnesses do not sit in the execution chamber itself but outside, watching through windows and listening to a loudspeaker. Prison officials cut off Warner's microphone but a reporter, outside the chamber, heard him say "my body is on fire" and "no one should go through this."

After Warner's execution, Oklahoma waited 6 years before trying another one.  That pause gave prison officials time to study and improve execution procedures.  (The current procedure can be found here.)

However, when Oklahoma resumed executions less than 2 weeks ago, on October 28, it didn't go well.  John Grant convulsed repeatedly and vomited before he died.

Julius Jones is next in line.