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 Lawyers for Richard Glossip, 52, had argued for a stay, saying
they had evidence pointing to his innocence, but they were turned
down by the U.S. Supreme Court minutes before the scheduled start of
the execution at 3 p.m. CDT.
Republican Governor Mary Fallin ordered the stay, saying the state
had received potassium acetate for use in its three-drug protocol
instead of the court-approved potassium chloride.
Her stay came about an hour after the scheduled start of the
execution, which was delayed by the Supreme Court decision.
The governor delayed Glossip's execution until Nov. 6 to determine
if potassium acetate would meet court requirements or if Oklahoma
would have to acquire potassium chloride.
Glossip, convicted of hiring a hit man to murder a motel owner,
would have been the second inmate put to death on Wednesday in the
United States after Georgia executed its first woman in seven
decades, Kelly Gissendaner, in the early morning.
 While three more inmates are scheduled to be executed next week in
the United States, the number of executions has declined in recent
years. The 35 executions carried out in 2014 were the lowest total
in two decades.
Glossip was convicted of arranging the 1997 murder of Barry Van
Treese, the owner of an Oklahoma City motel that Glossip was
managing.
His lawyers said no physical evidence tied Glossip to the crime and
he was convicted largely on the testimony of Justin Sneed, then 19,
who said Glossip hired him to carry out the killing. Sneed received
a life sentence.
The lawyers presented new statements from jailhouse informants who
said Sneed confessed to setting up Glossip so that he could avoid a
death sentence.
Dale Baich, one of Glossip's attorneys, said Oklahoma realized with
only moments to spare that it was not "capable of competently
executing" Glossip.
"Oklahoma has had months to prepare for this execution, and today's
events only highlight how more transparency and public oversight in
executions is sorely needed," Baich said in a statement.
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The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday denied a request to
halt the execution, saying in a majority decision it found the
evidence was neither new nor compelling enough to merit a
postponement.
Before the U.S. Supreme Court, only Justice Stephen Breyer said he
would have granted Glossip a stay of execution.
Pope Francis, an outspoken death penalty opponent, had asked Fallin
to commute Glossip's death sentence. She had declined to intervene
and on Wednesday apologized to the Van Treese family for issuing the
stay of execution.
An Oklahoma appeals court had thrown out a previous conviction,
saying evidence against Glossip was "extremely weak." A jury in 2004
again found him guilty and upheld the death sentence.
Glossip's execution would have been the first in Oklahoma since the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June the use of midazolam, a sedative in
the lethal injection procedure, did not violate the U.S.
Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Lawyers for Glossip and other Oklahoma death-row inmates had
challenged midazolam, saying it could cause undue suffering, and was
therefore unsuitable for executions, because it could not achieve
the level of unconsciousness required for surgery.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz and Heide Brandes; Editing by Lisa
Lambert and Eric Beech)
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