In brief: Inmate died from drugs, not heart attack

OKLAHOMA CITY – An Oklahoma death row inmate who writhed, moaned and clenched his teeth before he was pronounced dead about 43 minutes after his execution began succumbed to the lethal drugs he was administered, not a heart attack, after the state’s prisons chief halted efforts to kill him, an autopsy report released Thursday says.

Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton had said inmate Clayton Lockett died from a heart attack about 10 minutes after he ordered the execution stopped. It hadn’t been clear whether all three execution drugs administered to Lockett had actually made it into his system, but the independent autopsy performed for the state determined they did.

Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences at Dallas, which performed the autopsy, concluded that the cause of death was “judicial execution by lethal injection.” But the report does not answer why the execution took so long and why Lockett writhed on the gurney.

Four killed in crash of medical plane

Four people were killed Wednesday night when a Phoenix-bound medical transport plane went down in a fiery crash shortly after takeoff in southern New Mexico, police said.

The twin-engine propeller plane was found burning near Las Cruces around 7 p.m. Wednesday, roughly 50 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a statement from local police.

The plane had taken off from Las Cruces Airport, less than 10 miles from the crash site, police said.

The plane’s pilot, a paramedic, a nurse and the patient who was being taken to Phoenix were all killed in the crash, police said.

Police have said there was no rain or high wind in the area at the time of the crash.

Oklahoma loses control over education funding

OKLAHOMA CITY – President Barack Obama’s administration on Thursday stripped Oklahoma of authority to decide how to spend $29 million in education funding because the state abandoned national academic standards known as Common Core, in a rebuke that a union official said could lead to teacher layoffs.

The U.S. Department of Education said it was hitting Oklahoma with the sanction under the No Child Left Behind Act because the state could no longer demonstrate that its school standards were preparing students for college and careers.

The Republican-dominated Oklahoma Legislature voted this year to ditch Common Core, a national benchmark for what students should learn in such subjects as math and English that has been adopted in more than 40 states.

Following the announcement, Gov. Mary Fallin blasted Obama and the federal government for the decision and said Oklahoma would fight vigorously.

“It is outrageous that President Obama and Washington bureaucrats are trying to dictate how Oklahoma schools spend education dollars,” she said in a statement.

California drafts ‘yes means yes’ bill

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – State lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill that would make California the first state to define when “yes means yes” while investigating sexual assaults on college campuses.

The Senate unanimously passed SB967 as states and universities across the U.S. are under pressure to change how they handle rape allegations. The bill now goes to Gov. Jerry Brown, who has not indicated his stance on the bill.

Sen. Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, said his bill would begin a paradigm shift in how California campuses prevent and investigate sexual assault. Rather than using the refrain “no means no,” the definition of consent under the bill requires “an affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.” Earlier versions of the bill had similar language.

Silence or lack of resistance does not constitute consent. The legislation says it’s also not consent if the person is drunk, drugged, unconscious or asleep.