Is Oklahoma ok?

Two recent news items caught my interest this morning. The first is Slate's story about a study by the National Academy of Sciences that 1 in 25 criminal defendants sentenced to death in the United States are actually innocent. The other is this story about a botched execution in Oklahoma. As a result of the botched execution, Clayton Lockett "convulsed several times," spoke three times after prison officials tried to declare that Mr. Lockett was unconscious and according to USA Today eventually died of a heart attack 40 minutes after the execution began.

It sometimes seems that one of the hallmarks of the modern conservative movement is a mistrust of government (or maybe just the federal government). These stories makes one wonder why the citizens of a deeply red state like Oklahoma trust their state government with imposing the ultimate punishment a state can impose on someone.