By Graham Lee Brewer
The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City
McALESTER, Okla. — A Florida correctional administrator was named warden of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary on Wednesday.
Terry Royal, 44, of Clermont, Fla., will be the facility’s first warden since Anita Trammel stepped down amid a grand jury investigation into a lethal drug mix-up that halted a September execution.
Executions have been on hold ever since, marking the longest gap in lethal injections in the state since the mid-1990s, a few years after the practice began in Oklahoma.
Royal’s hiring must be approved by the Oklahoma Board of Corrections at its next scheduled meeting in September. In the meantime, Kevin Duckworth will continue his duties as interim warden.
Royal has worked in corrections since 1991, according to the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, most recently with the Florida Department of Corrections, where he worked as a warden and regional director.
“Corrections agencies throughout the nation are facing very significant challenges,” Royal said in a news release announcing his hire. “With the director’s leadership and the rest of the talented staff at the department, we will face challenges head-on to ensure the goals and mission of the facility and agency are met.”
Before his time in Florida, Royal worked 17 years in the Indiana Department of Corrections, working his way up from a correctional officer to a superintendent.
“Terry Royal has successfully navigated the corrections ranks throughout his career, beginning as a correctional officer to overseeing entire state regions as an administrator,” interim Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh said in the news release.
The multicounty grand jury report released in May found former warden Trammell’s oversight of lethal injections was inadequate and contributed to the confusion that halted the September execution of Richard Eugene Glossip, who remains on death row in McAlester.
State Corrections Department spokeswoman Terri Watkins was unable to say Wednesday whether Royal has experience administering or overseeing death sentences from his previous work, but said the state has yet to finalize its new execution protocol, which would detail the duties of the state penitentiary’s warden during executions.
In the past, the warden of the prison would stand next to the gurney inside the death chamber and oversee the process, periodically calling out updates on the inmate’s condition and announcing the time of death.
As part of the grand jury’s ruling, the state is required to file an update once a month on the department’s progress re-evaluating its execution
protocol.
Attorney General Scott Pruitt’s office must wait at least 150 days after new protocol is in place before asking the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to schedule future executions. However, lawyers for Oklahoma’s death row inmates have indicated any new protocol will likely reopen their challenge to the state’s execution method.