More experts testify in Oklahoma's federal execution protocol trial

FILE – This Oct. 9, 2014, file photo shows the gurney in the the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Okla. A 60-year-old Oklahoma man who stabbed a prison cafeteria worker to death in 1998 is scheduled to receive a lethal injection Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021 in the state’s first attempt to administer the death penalty since a series of flawed executions more than six years ago. The state was moving forward with John Marion Grant’s lethal injection after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision, lifted stays of execution that were put in place on Wednesday for Grant and another death row inmate, Julius Jones, by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

Posted: Mar 1, 2022 / 10:57 AM CST

Updated: Mar 1, 2022 / 10:57 AM CST

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OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Day two of testimony is currently underway in a federal trial that’s challenging whether Oklahoma’s execution protocol is Constitutional.

Attorneys for two dozen DOC inmates on death row are arguing that Oklahoma’s 3-drug lethal injection cocktail is a cruel form of punishment.

During testimony Monday, those attorneys called a professor of pharmacology to the stand.

He testified that the sedative Midazolam is not a useful drug as the first in the cocktail because it doesn’t prevent pain and suffering from the second and third drugs – saying even though it’s a 500mg dose, no amount of the drug can shield that pain – even calling it “torturous.”

On Tuesday, an autopsy director from a Mayo Clinic in Florida took the stand to talk about over 20 executions where inmates had the same three-drug cocktail and suffered from heavy lungs and pulmonary edema – like both Oklahoma death row inmates, John Grant and Bigler Stouffer did.

The trial is expected to last all week.