Sen. James M. Inhofe doesn’t have much sympathy for the man who died after a bungled execution attempt on Tuesday, and doesn’t think it should lead to a change in the death penalty.  

Inhofe, the senior senator from Oklahoma, said more attention should be paid to the suffering of the victim of 38-year-old Clayton Lockett.  

Lockett is the convicted murderer who died, reportedly of a heart attack, after an attempt to administer a lethal drug cocktail did not go as planned, leading to a particularly grim scene for witnesses of the execution.  

“You’re the first one to ask me about that,” Inhofe said, before saying he didn’t think a broad moratorium would be in order.
“No, I don’t think so,” Inhofe said when asked if executions should be halted in the aftermath of the incident.  

“Now this happened, I don’t remember the guy’s name, but I do know that he raped and then with a sawed-off shotgun shot the girl and buried her alive,” Inhofe said, recalling gruesome details of the crime that landed Lockett on death row in Oklahoma.  

“And the people who’re concerned about how much he must have suffered, they ought to think about how much she suffered, and I don’t think that should change anything,” Inhofe said. “Obviously, they need to find out what went wrong, and I have information that they’ve already done that.”