The ABA's pick for the "rule of law" lecturing around the world: the U.S. "Networking Genius" District Judge Stephen Friot who allowed two untested death penalty drugs to be used in executions - if it kills a dog, it will kill a man, and that's all that matters in the Oklahoma racist death penalty machine

Materials about judicial misconduct come on my radar in different ways, often when doing research for other projects.

While I was doing research for a book about proliferation of the American Bar Association to other countries (such as, my native Russia, and other former socialist countries) as emerging markets for businesses that ABA members represent, a number of "world-touring" judges came on my radar.

There is nothing better than to tour the world on somebody else's dime.

Of course, public officials, and especially judges, must make sure that there is no impropriety or even appearance of impropriety involved in anything they do in or even out of office.

Yet, American judges continue to tour the United States and the world giving lectures about the U.S. Constitution, "rule of law", judicial excellence and ethics - while being paid for by the very people who they "regulate" and give monopoly to (lawyers in the United States are licensed and disciplined by judges) and who appear in front of them, a direct conflict of interest.

Recently, I started to research the American Bar Association's "Rule of Law Initiative" (ROLI) that sponsored such judicial tours, lectures and "seminars" around the world - from Russia and Kazakhstan to Latin America.

Since Russian is my native language, I started my research of the ABA ROLI project from Russia and other countries that, due to having being, in the past, a part of the Soviet Union, still have information published in Russian.

The ever-growing lists of people who participated in the projects on both sides floored me.

I remember the claims made by American judges of

• low salaries - from $100,000 to over $200,000 in federal judges;
• crushing caseloads;

and, at that background, it was amazing that these overworked judges have found so much time for world tours.

Of course, as I said above, when they travel on somebody else's (ABA members' and US AID's) dime, that may change their perspective, ethics notwithstanding.

Judicial trips and educational "seminars" about judicial excellence and ethics have been recently, and vigorously, criticized on several grounds.

First, the criticism went, it is unethical for judges to accept a gift of any size and nature, and especially a gift as sizeable as an all-expenses-paid trip.  It creates an obligation or an appearance of obligation in a judge to the sponsor, which is not acceptable.

Second, such trips for judges are funded/ gifts are given by interest groups, which is a conflict of interest.

Third, when seminars are sponsored by an interest, what they are teaching is creating and embedding extreme bias into judges:

In other words, if, for example, the American Bar Association is sponsoring a trip to a seminar for attorney or judicial ethics, and the American Bar Association has a fat piece of a pie in attorney regulation in the United States by the Judiciary (attorneys in all jurisdictions of the U.S. are not licensed unless they graduated from an ABA-certified law school), it is very clear that the ABA will not allow any topics mentioned during such "education process" about:

1. possible unethical practices of the ABA or its members, whether attorneys or judges;
2. possible problems with judicial accountability for bias, misconduct and corruption - and corruption of judges BY prominent members of the American Bar Association, or, such a sticky issue that
3. creating monopoly of court representation only for licensed (ABA-approved) attorneys creates and widens the "justice gap" and deprives millions of Americans of affordable and diverse court representation, and that the ABA is ultimately responsible for the human rights crisis in the United States that would surely not be mentioned in seminars on "the rule of law" sponsored around the world by the ABA; and
4. that the laws and rules of judicial discretion created with ABA's participation, make the "rule of law" non-mandatory, discretionary, at all levels of judicial review in the United States, and thus non-existent.

I regularly write about misconduct of judges on this blog, and regularly write about decisions of judicial disciplinary authorities, populated by supermajorities of interest groups or interested individuals (judges or attorneys licensed by judges) who refuse to discipline judges no matter what they do.

I also wrote on this blog, last year, about the undercover expose operation made by a human rights anti-money laundering group from Europe who, posing as a representative of a corrupt African high-ranking public officials, asked a number of prominent American lawyers, including a recent President of the American Bar Association, for help in money laundering of moneys obviously obtained through corruption.

At that time, the watchdog group videotaped - and posted on YouTube for public viewing - how these prominent attorneys, nearly all of them (only ONE attorney out of 16 or so interviewed, refused to participate claiming that it would be an insult to even suggest something like that to him or his friends and colleagues), eagerly participated, and made statements to the interviewer (who was video-recording those statements) that:

1. attorneys rule the U.S., by making laws in legislatures the way that are favorable to them and
2. by having judges they personally know make decisions they need.

So far, NONE of these attorneys were disciplined or prosecuted in any way.

Whenever attorneys and judges travel abroad, especially to countries where they themselves acknowledge that there are problems with "the rule of law", there always exists a possibility that the trip can help some corrupt money laundering schemes, the fourth ethical problem, on top of the three above-mentioned reasons for deeming such trips unethical.

And yet, the tours of judges from other countries into the U.S., and from the U.S. to other countries, continue with a vengeance.

I wrote in my previous blog about non-profits created by judges, without advertising that they are the founders, directors, Presidents, Vice-Presidents and Treasurers of "partner" companies of such world tours - while I doubt that the judges use their own funds to fund their non-profits, and while fundraising by and donations to non-profits founded and run by judges creates a fifth ethical problem, making judges beholden to those who finance their little "project". 

Of course, judges do not mention their non-profits, or the fundraising or financial activities of such non-profits in the "rule of law" tours - nationally or internationally.

For example, in 2012, the Oklahoma Bar Association gave an award of judicial excellence to a federal judge Stephen Friot for "his efforts to strengthen the rule of law in Russia".  The Oklahoma Bar Association made a statement at that time that "[t]he Russian judiciary looks to the American system as a model for securing the rule of law".

There are several important implications in that statement:

1. that there is the rule of law in the United States;
2. that it is so good that it should be used as a model by other countries;
3. that there is no rule of law in Russia, because it was not secured yet, and
4. that Russian judiciary, as diligent pupils, try to gather wisdom from the American judiciary in how they should do their jobs in their own country;
5. that Judge Stephen Friot is the role model for the Russian judiciary to get that wisdom from; and
6. that Judge Stephen Friot has done a tremendous job in teaching those ignorant Russian judges what the rule of law is.

It is, of course, interesting and even enlightening that it was not the well-taught Russian judges who were giving Judge Friot an award for his excellent teaching, but the Oklahoma Bar Association whose members, most likely, never saw Moscow.

But, in the American legal profession it is considered ethical and not a bad tone to praise yourself for honor and excellence - even while absolving yourself from dishonorable deeds, like judges are doing in the U.S. by, at the very same time:

1. creating, and demanding of lawyers and parties to accept, the "presumption of integrity of the judiciary", and
2. creating, and demanding of lawyers to respect, the absolute immunity of judges for malicious and corrupt acts on the bench.

Here, the legal profession - the vassals of the judiciary, whose very livelihood, reputation and ability to earn a living are in the hands of judges who "regulate" their law licenses, can revoke them on a whim, and, through "discretionary" rulings, can make or break any case for any lawyer, and make sure that a lawyer is either a "winning" lawyer, and is thus prosperous and in demand by clients, or a "losing" lawyer and going bankrupt - and judicial discretion has more correlation with being "nice" to the judge (as in sponsoring the judge's world tours "nice"), rather than being "nasty" to the judge (as in "making motions to recuse" or criticizing judicial misconduct "nasty").

Let's see how many tours the beacon of excellence Judge Stephen Friot made to Russia on the dime of American lawyers whose licenses he regulated and whose businesses in the courtroom he controlled, and what he did there.

It is interesting to mention that the only dates that are mentioned in the statements regarding an award given to Judge Friot by the Oklahoma State Bar in 2012 were 2007 and 2008, and there is a reason for it.

First, the ABA ROLI Russia project reportedly ended in 2012 for some reason.  Either ABA and the US AID have either reached their goals, or there was a falling out with the Russian government.

Moreover, in 2008, according to reports of the ABA Rule of Law project in Moscow, Russia has passed a law prohibiting Russian judges to accept invitations of foreign-sponsored trips abroad, therefore, Judge Friot is playing safe by not disclosing whether any such trips took place after 2008.

Judge Friot is also playing safe by having the Oklahoma Bar Association mention only that he worked "with" the Russian American Rule of Law Consortium, instead of being one of the Directors of that non-profit.

Let's go through the description of Judge Friot's excellence in world touring, paragraph by enlightening paragraph.

What do a judge's efforts to strengthen the rule of law anywhere other than in his own courtroom, and especially in a foreign country, has to do with judicial duties, and why such world-touring requires an award by those dependent upon the judge's good graces for their livelihoods (licensed attorneys), is anybody's guess.

 So, Judge Friot's world-touring was done with support and, possibly, sponsorship also from:

• the Federal Judicial Center (an organization of the federal American government); and

• the Open World Center, "the only exchange program within the U.S. legislative branch", and a program that "receives annual funding from U.S. Congress" - so tours sponsored by the Open World are directly sponsored by the U.S. government, which creates a great problem for Russian judges to travel to the U.S., as a violation of the 2008 law not to travel abroad on foreign dime.

What kind of "excellence" Russian judges are engaged in on tours sponsored and accompanied by the Russian American Legal Consortium partners can be shown in this Russian-language article from 2003, which shows a picture of a happy judge from the Russian town of Penza holding two bottles of what looks obviously as alcohol, one per hand, with a subtitle saying "The Chairman of the October Area Court of Penza Valentin Ulanov likes the taste of the American justice system":

Judge Valentin Ulanov looks different when sober, frames his official picture with the Russian flag and not booze on both sides, same as Judge Friot likes to accompany his picture with an American flag and now toils as the Chief Judge of the Ivanovo Regional Court.

Compare with Judge Friot's picture next to American flag, stressing his status and "judicial excellence".



Judge Ulanov, same as Judge Friot, has an award for his "contributions to the justice system".

By the way, Judge Ulanov was a Communist Party instructor before becoming a judge - as a lot of judges his age are in Russia, which, obviously, does not make communication with them for American judges and the American Bar Association any less sweeter.

The article mentions that Judge John Dooley, the President of the same Russian American Rule of Law Consortium where U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot is a Director, participated in that tour in 2003.

The article also mentioned that one judge, Stanislav Razumov, rejected this world-touring invitation fraught with appearance of impropriety and conflicts of interest, and, as the article speculates, will be forever banned from the United States for this slight.

The article also mentions that the press-secretary of the Russian Supreme Court Pavel Odintsov also participated in the tour:

The inscription says: "The Press-Secretary of the Supreme Court of Russia Pavel Odintsov looked down on the U.S. judicial system".

This is a great use of an educational tour to promote judicial ethics and excellence, to post prank-y pictures on the Internet.

While Russian judges were ferried to the U.S., American judges either accompanied those Russian judges on all-expenses-paid tours across the United States, making valuable contacts at the top level of the U.S. government, like Judge John Dooley did with the tour of the drinking judge from Penza, or made all expenses paid trips abroad, or both.

The Oklahoma Bar Association further writes in its 2012 statement about Judge Friot's endeavors in Russia:

Judges love using the word "guidance", it allows them to show how far above they are in relation to somebody else.

In this instance, Judge Friot put himself above even "policy-makers" in Russia, providing them with "guidance".

I wonder whether it is appropriate for a federal judge to "provide guidance" to "policy-makers" of a country which is not exactly friendly to the U.S., or whether it is, in fact, grounds for impeachment.  I would stick with the latter.

The paragraph mentions that judge Friot visited the Russian towns of:

1. Ulyanovsk (a town located on the Volga River);
2. Nizhniy Novgorod - a tourist destination on the same Volga River; and
3. St. Petersburg - a very expensive (and thus attractive for the freeloading judges) tourist destination

I wonder, I really wonder - when did judge Steven Friot get all that time for all that activity:

1. lecturing, 
2. article-writing;
3. teaching;
4. world touring -

with his supposedly crushing caseloads in federal courts, including his own?

Judge Friot's diligence to the cause of improving the rule of law in Russia is even more interesting that Judge Friot, as it will be shown later, is extremely brisk in reviewing and deciding death penalty cases in his own court, the job that he is paid for by taxpayers to the order of , nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Congress.

Here is an excerpt from Judge Friot's confirmation hearing in the U.S. Congress, complete with the voting roll and the praise lavished upon him - while listing his experience as an attorney before coming to the bench:

Now, the praise comes, saying that "President Bush could not have chosen a finer individual to serve our country as a district court judge", and that Steve Friot is "exceptionally qualified" for the position.

Remember, this is the lecturer to the Russian government, judges and attorneys on "comparative constitutional analysis".

In 2001, when Steve Friot was nominated for the federal bench - where he was supposed to decide, predominantly, civil rights cases (constitutional law) and federal criminal cases, including death penalty cases, here is his litigation experience, as paraded in the confirmation hearing in the U.S. Senate in 2001:

Working for 29 years in the area of law that had nothing to do with constitutional law, civil rights, criminal law or the death penalty, truly "qualified" Steve Friot to be a federal judge.

I wonder what Steve Friot or his law firm did to secure his nomination to the federal bench from President Bush.  Judging by accounts in a book "After the Madness" by the former Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals Sol Wachtler, and in a book by journalist Linda Wolf about Sol Wachtler, President Bush gave out nominations to completely unqualified people, simply because they donated a lot to his election campaign.

For example, President Bush reportedly nominated to the position of an ambassador Sol Wachtler's former lover (and big financial contributor to President Bush's election campaign at the time when all "heavyweight" pollsters thought that his opponent will win) Joy Silverman to Barbados, while she did not even have a college degree, and her entire "qualification", apart from being the financial contributor to President Bush's election campaign was that she took French in high school (the U.S. Congress did not confirm that nomination).

The next paragraph explains why the Oklahoma State Bar was so eager to give an award of any kind to Steven Friot - he was one of their functionaries.

The statement in the confirmation hearing runs that, before coming to the bench:

• Friot "has been very active in the Oklahoma Bar Association serving several times as a member of the Association's House of Delegates", and that
• Friot "has also served as chairman of the association's committees on Legal Specialization and Administration of Justice", as well as
• Friot "served as president of the Oklahoma County Bar Association", not to mention that
• Friot was, in the 2001, the president of a "Ruth Bader Ginsburg Inn of Court", American Inns of Court being a secret-membership organization where attorneys meet with judges behind closed doors, wine and dine them, and - sponsor their trips.

It Steve Friot's case, the brown-nosing of the judiciary went so far that the particular "Inn of Court" where he was president was named after a U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who was on the bench since 1993, on the bench at the time of Friot's nomination, and who is still on the bench.

It worked. 

Steve Friot was confirmed by the Senate.

After all, who can turn down the President of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Inn of Court.

Why I say that Inns of Court and this particular one, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Inn of Court, have secret membership?

Go to their link and press "Members" on the left.

Here is what you will see:

What is shown to the public in that venerable Inn of Court is the list of officers (not members).

The officers of that Inn of Court are private attorneys, a U.S. attorney and several judges from Oklahoma courts, including several officers of the Oklahoma Bar Association.

The "meeting schedule" of these "officers" and of members of this "Inn" is secret, and, obviously, opponents from court cases that these judges and attorney members of the Inn of Court may be happily discussing behind closed doors are not invited.

Judge Friot was promoting this illegal scheme for years, as president of this Inn of Court.

I doubt that he shared this experience either in the confirmation hearing to his judicial position, or in his grandstanding lectures to Russian attorneys, judges and "policy-makers".

After learning that Steve Friot was the backseat driver and benefactor of the American judiciary, and did his behind-the-scenes puppet show in the name of the sitting justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one does not need to read anything else about Friot to figure out why was he nominated.

It is likely that Friot's nomination to the federal bench was decided not in the U.S. Congress, but in his own "Inn of Court", over a dinner with wine with somebody who knows how to make things happen.

 Of course, Friot has a great commitment to his community because he supported Boy Scouts of America and even served as "Assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 4" - likely, for his own children.

And, of course, Steve Friot built houses for low-income families through the "Habitat for Humanity".

I am wondering - where a busy law partner of a large law firm who was supposed to work 16 hours a day litigating for his clients in the area of:

• corporate defense;
• tort defense; and
• aviation litigation

took time to do all of that:

• "service" on the House of Delegates of the Oklahoma State Bar Association;
• "service" in several Committees of that same association;
• Presidency over the Oklahoma County Bar Association;
• Presidency in the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Inn of Court;
• Assistant Scoutmaster-ship in Troop 4 of Boy Scouts;
• building houses for the Habitat for Humanity;
• "service" as a co-Trustee of the Oklahoma State Housing Financing Authority.

Since it is physically impossible to combine all of those activities, it is apparent that Friot's job as a law partner was not litigating - it was networking, so that their cases are decided not in the courtroom, but through connections.

But, networking for years does not qualify an attorney for the bench, and does not prepare him for a task to resolve cases in the areas of law he has no clue about.

Appointing to the bench such a "jurist" is not doing the public any good.  On the opposite.

Just one year after his confirmation to the federal bench in 2001, in 2002, Steve Friot co-founded the Russian-American Rule of Law Consortium, became its director and took his "networking" to the next level, fully using (abusing) his judicial office to squeeze every possible financial benefit from it while he is still on the bench.

You can't keep a good guy down.

Judge Friot spruced up his boring existence on the bench, at the cost to taxpayers of this amount of money from 2001 to 2017 (an apparent large loss of income as compared to his likely earnings as a law partner of a large law firm with corporate clients - which could only be compensated by some extra income and benefits):

by all-expenses-paid trips to Russia, away from his loving wife of 25 years, kindergarten teacher Nancy, and by ferrying Russian judges into the U.S., of course, to show them the way to judicial excellence.

Just after 6 short years on the bench, Judge Friot became, from an expert in aviation litigation, an expert in constitutional review, and "served as the U.S. judicial delegate to the Tenth International Forum on Constitutional Review, in Moscow" - an all-expenses-paid trip sponsored by the "Institute for Law and Public Policy" which is, interestingly enough, located in Moscow, Russia.

During his years on the bench Judge Friot did not abandon his routine that he established while he was still an attorney - to do anything but his job.

Judge Friot's picture posted on the Internet - in chambers, shirt-and-suspenders only, the American flag next to him, with a heavy, cruel and arrogant gaze - shows all that you need to know about who Judge Friot is in the way of "judicial excellence".

And, for his continued efforts towards excellence, his own, and his colleagues from other countries that he needs to provide "guidance" for, as for ignorant children, the Oklahoma State Bar Association congratulated Judge Friot and gave him an award of judicial excellence in 2012.

I wonder whether, at the time when the Oklahoma City Chapter of the Federal Bar Association - people who practice in front of him, while awarding him, in the hopes of future benefits, the "awards of excellence", people who congratulated Judge Friot on his "distinguished judicial career", thanking him for "a lifetime of service to the bar, the bench, and the broader community", whether these people were aware not only of Judge Friot's alleged diligence in his endeavors to teach Russian barbarians the rule of law, but also about Judge Friot's total lack of diligence in verifying whether the State of Oklahoma, where he has so many friends on all levels of the government, is engaging in unconstitutional torture in killing its condemned prisoners with unproven drugs.

Oklahoma is a famous state in terms of criminal justice, where:

• a judge can, for years, entertain himself during criminal jury trials by using a penis pump on the bench instead of following testimony, while court employees knew about it and were deathly afraid to report it for fear of losing their jobs;
• a judge can be convicted for stealing cattle and embezzling thousands of dollars from people, but not for sending a 7-month-old baby back to his abuser, to the child's death;
• where the top court of the State of Oklahoma is lowering the bar for the required qualifications for attorneys - and, obviously, judges who are required to be attorneys - to enter the profession because otherwise there will be nobody for law schools to lure and soak for tuition fees - with a resulting quality of criminal defense;
• where the top Oklahoma State Court does not consider forcible sodomy of an unconscious victim a rape; and
• where the death penalty is, reportedly, racist in regards to both the race of victim (if the victim is not white, then the death penalty is less likely) and the race of defendant (if the defendant is not white, the death penalty is more likely):

And, in that blessed State, a federal white judge made the following decisions regarding use of unproven or mislabeled drugs (in what Texas was recently prohibited by the Federal Food and Drug Administration from doing) on convicted prisoners - because they will eventually kill them anyway, with or without torture.  After all, who cares about human rights and the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution against cruel and unusual punishment?

Certainly not Judge Friot - he cannot be upended from his bench for any misconduct in office - this is how the federal "Judicial Disability Act" works.

Federal judges are immune from lawsuits for malicious and corrupt conduct on the bench - on the premise that alternative means of discipline are available.

And, federal judges are not subject to those alternative means of discipline, because the Judicial Disability Act does not allow discipline of federal judges for anything they did on the bench.

In other words - a federal judge in the United States is God Almighty, to say and to do as he wishes, and all of litigants and attorneys in front of him are screwed.  I wonder if Judge Friot shared that happy piece of "scholarship" with his Russian colleagues, as part of teaching them about judicial excellence.

Armed with this happy knowledge for 16 years so far, Judge Friot, the Co-Director of the Russian-American Rule of Law Consortium, partner of the American Bar Association's Rule of Law Initiative in Russia, promoted by a Russian American attorney Gleb Glinka, Judge Friot, an expert on constitutional law, made the following decisions in death penalty cases:

In 2010, Judge Friot allowed an execution to proceed with a pentobarbital drug, despite medical testimony that the drug may cause paralysis of reactions, but not pain - and animal advocates should be on the alert because that particular drug is being used, widely, for euthanasia of animals in the United States, which is why it was enough for Judge Friot to allow its use in the apparent Mengele-like Nazi experimentation on human subjects.

In 2014 Judge Friot delayed an execution in Oklahoma with the use of yet another drug untested as to its painkilling quality for execution purposes (midazolam) only because he "doubted" the State of Oklahoma had enough time to train its execution "teams" - after a black condemned prisoner Clayton Lockett

was tortured to death for 43 minutes .

Nevertheless, just three months later after expressing his "doubts" about whether the execution "teams" could be "re-trained" with "new protocols" of executions, Judge Friot denied injunction to 21 condemned prisoners concerned that they will be similarly tortured to death with the same drug - and allowed executions with the same drug to proceed, despite testimony of experts indicating that there is no evidence that the drug provides sufficient sedation and pain relief during the execution and may cause "lingering death" (torture).

Here is the gruesome statistics of executions in the State of Oklahoma.

I recently ran a comprehensive analysis of racial and age composition of death row inmates in Texas.

I doubt that Oklahoma's racial composition of inmates is any different.

After Judge Friot's 2010 decision allowing to kill condemned prisoners with pentobarbital, the State of Oklahoma killed John David Duty.

It took him 6 long minutes to die.

In January of 2015, due to Judge Friot's 2014 decision to allow midazolam to be used in executing people despite Clayton Lockett's botched execution, the State of Oklahoma executed Charles Frederick Warner.

It took him 18 long minutes to die, and he reported that all of his body was on fire.  People may not feel sorry for him for what he was convicted about, but, if this is a country that takes pride in its "rule of law" to the point of trying to teach judges of other countries (and especially in countries where, like in Russia, death penalty is long suspended as a barbarian practice and as a condition of being part of the European Union and of civilized society), at the very least, executions should not be turned into torture.

Today, on January 26, 2017, another federal judge, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Michael Merz has ruled that the use of midazolam in executions would created a "substantial risk of serious harm" or "an objectively intolerable risk of harm" - and stopped executions in Ohio.

Yet, in Oklahoma, the tortured deaths of at least two people is on Judge Friot's hands.

Judge Friot allowed the tortured death of a black man, Charles Frederick Warner (took him 18 minutes to die and he stated his body was all on fire)

knowing full well what a torture the death of the previous condemned inmate, also a black man, Clayton Lockett, with the same drug, has been.

Here is how Clayton Lockett, reportedly, died - which did not impress Judge Friot enough to stop executions with the same drug of Charles Frederick Warner:

"Lockett's failed execution occurred at Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma, on April 29, 2014, after he had been tasered by staff and attempted to cut himself earlier that day.^[24]

A paramedic tried twice to put an IV needle into Lockett's left arm but failed.^[25]

She then tried to insert the needle into his brachial vein in his biceps but also failed.

She asked for help from a doctor in attendance, Johnny Zellner, who tried three times to get the IV into the jugular vein in Lockett's neck but failed.

He then tried the subclavian vein in Lockett's collar bone but failed again.

The paramedic tried two veins in the left foot but failed.

Finally Zellner managed to insert the needle in the femoral vein in the groin.

Administration of the first drug midazolam, a sedative, started at 6:23 p.m CDT, but the IV dislodged from the vein and further drugs were injected into the flesh. Lockett was declared unconscious at 6:33 p.m. The two additional drugs, vecuronium bromide - a paralytic - and potassium chloride, to stop the heart from beating, were then injected even though the IV was not in a vein. At 6:36 he started to struggle violently and tried to talk, and the execution was halted at 6:56.^[25] He was declared dead at 7:06 p.m. due to a heart attack.^[26]

Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton said one of the doctors present stopped the execution after Lockett had a "vein failure".^[27] According to the Department of Corrections, the time for an inmate to be pronounced dead was 6 to 12 minutes in the previous 19 executions before Lockett's.^[28]
After being declared unconscious, Lockett was able to raise his head and said, "Oh, man", "I'm not..." and according to some sources,^[4] "something's wrong".^[29] Lockett began writhing at 6:36 p.m. and was observed twitching and convulsing. He attempted to rise from the table at 6:37 p.m. and loudly exhaled.^[4] A lawyer for Lockett reportedly said, “It looked like torture.” ^[17]
All three drugs had been administered to Lockett, but it was unclear how much had entered his system. A vein in the groin was selected as the injection site, and a cloth was put over it to prevent witnesses seeing the groin area. This prevented staff from seeing that the IV connection had failed.^[24] Patton has stated "the chemicals did not enter into the offender".^[28] Prison officials had reportedly discussed taking Lockett to a hospital before he died.^[30]
A subsequent report showed Clayton Lockett's execution was halted 33 minutes after it began. His vein collapsed as the drugs were administered, and after this was noticed by the doctor, that doctor stated that Lockett had not been given enough of the drugs to result in death, but there were not enough of the drugs left to attempt to continue the execution. The report noted:

The doctor checked the IV and reported the blood vein had collapsed, and the drugs had either absorbed into tissue, leaked out or both. [...] Patton asked if enough drugs had been administered to cause death, to which the doctor replied “no”. The director then asked if another vein was available to complete the execution, and if so, were there enough drugs left. The doctor answered no to both questions.^[31]"

So, let's count the "attempts" of TWO medical professionals - a paramedic and a doctor - to get a needle into a condemned inmate's vein:

Who	Number of attempts		Result
Paramedic	2 1 2	Left arm Bracial vein in the biceps Veins in the left foot	Failed Failed Failed
Doctor Johnny Zellner	3 1 1	Jugular vein in the neck Subclavian vein in the collar bone Femural vein in the groin	Failed Failed Succeeded

10 ATTEMPTS TOTAL:  5 attempts by paramedic and 5 attempts by a doctor Johnny Zellner (who was sued after his "efforts" by the family of the executed man) to get a needle into a man's vein, 9 of them botched.

Clayton Lockett was tortured by incompetent medical personnel before any drugs started to flow into his veins.

Yet, Judge Friot considered that the use of incompetent medical personnel who tortured a prisoner, and the use of a drug that made the prisoner wake up after he was supposedly sedated into unconsciousness, and suffer through 43 minutes of execution, was not enough to stop executions in the State of Oklahoma. 

And allowed Charles Frederick Warner to be killed by the same means.

These people's tortured deaths are on Judge Friot's hands.

Remember this man.

Wherever around the world he is going to lecture on the rule of law, constitutionalism, ethics and judicial excellence, this trail of blood should follow him.

Boycott Judge Friot's lectures.

Boycott Judge Friot's seminars.

To be a "networker" and secretly participating as a director of non-profits likely funded by attorneys, in order to fund his all-expenses-paid overseas trips, instead of doing his job as a judge, is bad enough.

Putting more diligence into attorney-sponsored entertainment tours for American and foreign judges than into doing his own job as a federal judge in order to make sure that torture is not happening on the U.S. soil - is quite another thing.

And remember - THIS man the American Bar Association has chosen as an "expert on judicial excellence" to speak overseas about "the rule of law", and how it should be.

And THIS man was given a reward by the Oklahoma Bar Association, after he allowed the tortured execution of John David Duty with the unproven drug, thus allowing unlawful medical experimentation on humans.