ON JUNE 29, the very day the United States Supreme Court upheld Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol in Glossip v. Gross, signaling to the state that it could resume executions, State Attorney General Scott Pruitt wasted no time. His office sent a request to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals asking that death warrants be signed for the next three men in line for the gurney — the same three men whose challenge had made it all the way to Washington. "The above inmates have exhausted all regular state and federal appeals," the attorney general wrote, respectfully urging the Court to schedule their executions. On Wednesday, July 8, the Court complied, setting three dates for the fall.

Richard Glossip is first in line to die, on September 16. As the lead plaintiff in the case before the Supreme Court, his name became synonymous with the legal fight over midazolam, a drug linked to a number of botched executions, but which the Court decided is constitutional for carrying out lethal injections. Glossip, who spoke to The Intercept hours after the ruling, did not have time to dwell on the decision. Even if the Court had ruled in his favor, he pointed out, Oklahoma remained determined to execute him and has provided itself with a range of options for doing so — most recently, adding nitrogen gas to the mix. With a new execution date looming, "I'm trying to stop them from killing me by any method," Glossip said, "because of the fact that I'm innocent."