Oklahoma asks US Supreme Court to lift execution stays

By SEAN MURPHY
Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Oklahoma is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling and allow the state to carry out its first execution in more than six years. The Oklahoma attorney general’s office filed its appeal to the nation’s highest court Wednesday night, hours before Thursday’s scheduled execution of 60-year-old John Marion Grant. A three-member panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued temporary stays of execution Wednesday for Grant and Julius Jones. The court ruled that a federal judge in Oklahoma erred when he removed Grant, Jones and three other inmates from a lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocols.