“You would hope after all the reports and investigations and after the botched executions and almost execution of Glossip with the wrong drug, that Oklahoma would renew its commitment to being deliberate in the execution process,” said Ngozi Ndulue, the senior director of Research and Special Projects for the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. “But scheduling these seven executions in such close proximity and essentially shortcutting the judicial review of the state’s protocol does not inspire confidence.”

...While use of the death penalty is on the decline nationwide, there’s still plenty of support for it in Oklahoma. In 2016, voters codified the use of the death penalty in the state’s constitution.

Ndulue called Oklahoma’s proposed execution timeline “really troubling.”

“It’s troubling both from a government accountability reason and also to think about processes that are being shortcut by scheduling them like this,” she said. “It really shows a disregard for other institutional actors, courts, pardon and parole boards, who are now forced to keep up with this timeline that seems unnecessary and rushed.”

The Court of Criminal Appeals has yet to rule on O’Connor’s requested execution dates, but its decision could “come any day now,” Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board Executive Director Tom Bates said during a meeting last month.

The compacted nature of the proposed execution schedule has already had an impact. The Pardon and Parole Board, which has spent more than a year creating new policies in order to hear commutation applications from death row prisoners, held a special meeting in August to write another new policy that allows it to hold commutation and clemency hearings at the same time. Since the Court of Criminal Appeals is yet to rule on the proposed execution dates, at least a few of those pre-scheduled clemency hearings will be pushed back.

Clemency hearings, where the board hears from both those seeking to have their execution halted and from victims and law enforcement advocates seeking to keep the execution on the books, are required by Oklahoma law to be set for inmates who have a scheduled execution date. They must be held no fewer than 21 days before the scheduled execution, and having so many executions potentially scheduled in such a short time frame meant the board had to tentatively set seven clemency hearings before the Court of Criminal Appeals had even ruled on the proposed execution dates.

The last time Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board held a clemency hearing was in 2015, and the board has completely turned over since that time. Now it will hold seven clemency hearings in five months. The board passes its recommendations on clemency to the governor, who makes the final decision. "