Federal appeals court temporarily halts executions of John Grant and Julius Jones in Oklahoma

A federal appeals court temporarily halted the scheduled executions of two Oklahoma inmates on Wednesday. John Marion Grant was scheduled to die on Thursday, while Julius Jones' lethal injection was scheduled for November 18.

According to the ruling from the 10th Circuit Appeals Court, the three-judge panel found a stay was warranted after Grant and Jones challenged the state's lethal injection protocol and refused to identify another method which they preferred for their executions. The two had cited religious reasons, saying they could not partake in what they viewed as "suicide."

However, Grant and Jones were punished for not choosing an alternative form of execution when U.S. District Judge Stephen Friot removed them from a federal lawsuit they had filed, along with 30 other death-row inmates, challenging Oklahoma's lethal injection protocols, the federal appeals court said. Grant and Jones were immediately scheduled to be executed despite the fact that the Oklahoma attorney general said on-the-record plaintiffs in the long-running lawsuit would not be executed while it was pending in the district court.