Oklahoma prison officials have carried out the first execution in the United States this year. Forty-six-year-old Donald Grant was strapped to a gurney at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester Thursday morning and injected with a lethal cocktail of three drugs. He was declared dead at 10:16 a.m. Grant, a Black man, had asked federal courts to halt his killing, saying Oklahoma’s lethal injection protocol presented an unconstitutional risk of pain and suffering.

It was Oklahoma’s third execution since the death penalty was reinstated after a six-year pause that followed a string of botched executions. Last October, 60-year-old John Marion Grant convulsed and repeatedly vomited after he was administered a sedative in an execution that witnesses described as drawn-out and tortuous.