MCALESTER, Okla. — The U.S. Supreme Court has lifted stays of execution for two Oklahoma men. The high court’s move Thursday allows the state to move forward with its first lethal injection in more than six years.
The court lifted stays for John Marion Grant and Julius Jones that the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put in place a day earlier.
They’re among more than two dozen death row inmates who are challenging Oklahoma’s three-drug lethal injection protocols.
The state has executed Oklahoma has executed Sixty-year-old Grant, who stabbed a prison cafeteria worker to death in 1998 in the state’s first lethal injection following a six-year moratorium.
Grant began convulsing and vomiting shortly after the first drug, midazolam, was administered. He was declared dead about 20 minutes after the execution began. Grant is the first inmate to be executed since a series of flawed executions in 2014 and 2015.
Grant was serving a 130-year prison sentence for several armed robberies when witnesses say he dragged prison cafeteria worker Gay Carter into a mop closet and stabbed her 16 times with a homemade shank.
Jones’ execution is set for Nov. 18.