Oklahoma is preparing to carry out its first execution since a sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state's three-drug formula used in lethal injections.
Richard Eugene Glossip is scheduled to be executed Wednesday afternoon at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was convicted of ordering the beating death of a motel owner in 1997 in what prosecutors say was a murder for hire.
Glossip, 52, was the lead plaintiff in a case before the nation's high court that argued the sedative midazolam violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment because it didn't adequately render an inmate unconscious before the second and third drugs were administered.