Other than perhaps in Oklahoma, will this week's ugly execution change any death penalty dynamics?

Throughout this week there has been plenty of old and new media attention given to the ugly execution that was completed in Oklahoma Tuesday night.  And Oklahoma official will likely need a number of months to sort out everything before getting its machinery of death up and running again.  But outside of Oklahoma, does anyone believe that yet another ugly lethal injection is likely to change, in any major way, the standard modern policy and litigation dynamics that now surround the administration of capital punishment in the United States?

The Oklahoma ugliness did force a few federal officials — the President and the US Senators from  Oklahoma — to finally say something about lethal injection practices that have been long discussed and litigated in state and federal courts nationwide.  But comments by federal officials, as well as those by state officials in Oklahoma and elsewhere, as well as by the well-known advocates in the pro- and anti-death penalty camps, seem just like another round of the usual reactions to the usual claims and concerns that arise whenever a lethal injection execution fails to go smoothly.

Lots of folks who follow these issues closely (in the pro- and anti-death penalty camps) have talked about states exploring other execution methods, but I have seen little serious discussion of that possibility among lawmakers even in the wake of the Oklahoma ugliness.  And though abolitionists are sure to use this incident as one more talking point to advocate formal repeal of the death penalty in those states that rarely execute, there is little evidence that those states which remain eager to carry out death sentences see what happened in Oklahoma as a reason to slow down the march of convicted murderers to execution chambers.

Perhaps I have grown too cynical and jaded about the state and fate of modern death penalty debates.  But even details of the ugly Oklahoma execution are still emerging, this is already feeling like old and tired news to me.  Are my instincts here wrong, dear readers?

Some recent related posts:

• Split Oklahoma Supreme Court stays executions based on drug secrecy concerns
• Oklahoma Supreme Court allows executions to get back on track
• Double execution scheduled for tonight in Oklahoma drawing international interest
• First of two planned Oklahoma executions botched, though condemned dies of heart attack after getting execution drugs
• Ugly Oklahoma execution leading to calls for national moratorium
• Sampling of reactions and commentary in wake of Oklahoma's execution problems
• New details emerge concerning ugly Oklahoma execution

UPDATE:  So only a matter of hours after I wrote this post, the President of the United States decided to prove me wrong.  Specifically, as this Reuters report and headline highlights, it appears that Attorney General Eric Holder has a new assignment from his boss because of the ugliness in OK: "Obama to have attorney general look into botched execution in Oklahoma." Here are the details:

President Barack Obama on Friday said the botched execution of a murderer in Oklahoma raises questions about the death penalty in the United States and he will ask the U.S. attorney general to look into the situation. "What happened in Oklahoma is deeply troubling," he said....

Obama cited uneven application of the death penalty in the United States, including racial bias and cases in which murder convictions were later overturned, as grounds for further study on the issue. "And this situation in Oklahoma just highlights some of the significant problems," he said at a news conference.

"I'll be discussing with (Attorney General) Eric Holder and others to get me an analysis of what steps have been taken - not just in this particular instance but more broadly - in this area," he said. "I think we do have to, as a society, ask ourselves some difficult and profound questions around these issues."