The Marshall Project

Why Oklahoma Plans to Execute People With Nitrogen

The state knows shockingly little about how this would work.

Oklahoma has always been the nation’s laboratory for capital punishment.

It was a state legislator named Bill Wiseman who in 1977 came up with the idea of lethal injection by asking the state medical examiner for a more humane, scientific way to put human beings to death.

It looks like Oklahoma might be experimenting again. On Wednesday, the state’s Attorney General and director of corrections announced that a severe nationwide shortage of

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