(NewsNation) — An Oklahoma appeals court judge told corrections staff to “man up” and “suck it up” after the state’s attorney general requested a 90-day period between executions on their behalf, citing mental and emotional trauma, exhaustion and risk of potential errors. 

Oklahom’s Attorney General Gentner Drummond requested the time between executions to be increased from 60 to 90 days as corrections staff charged with carrying out the death penalty were under strain and a “tremendous burden,” reported The Guardian. 

Steven Harpe, executive director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, wrote in a January letter to the attorney general that the existing schedule was “too onerous and not sustainable,” the outlet reported.

In the motion requesting more time — which was also signed by Drummond’s office — Harpe said the department had carried out 11 executions since 2021, “exhibiting superior work ethic, professionalism, and concern for the victim’s families throughout,” but the pace was overwhelming for staff. 

The plea did not convince Judge Gary Lumpkin who rejected the request during a hearing last week. 

“Man up. If you can’t do the job, you step aside and let somebody do it that can,” Lumpkin said at the hearing, the outlet reported. “We set a reasonable amount of time to start this out, and y’all keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it.

“Who’s to say next month you won’t come in and say I need 120 days? This stuff needs to stop, and people need to suck it up, realize they have a hard job to do, and get it done in a timely, proficient, professional way,” Lumpkin added.

A week after Lumpkin’s ruling, the state executed Michael Dewayne Smith by lethal injection on Thursday. 

Smith was convicted of shooting and killing two people in Oklahoma City more than two decades ago and had spent 21 years on death row. 

Under the states’ current schedule,  25 prisoners are slated to be executed in less than three years, which amounts to 58% of the inmates on death row in Oklahoma, the Guardian reported. 

At the hearing before Lumpkin,  Drummond cited interviews with corrections staff who said they barely had time for a break between executions before they had to start practicing for the next. 

He also expressed concern over botched executions in 2015 and in 2014,  the outlet reported, saying that he did not want to oversee failed executions. 

“I am present with every execution. I look the defendant in the eye as he dies,” Drummond said. “I look the men and women that administer those lethal injections in the eye after they’ve administered it, and I have sympathy for the strain on them.”

Oklahoma has a sordid history of botched executions. 

During a lethal injection procedure in 2014, death row prisoner Clayton Locket convulsed, exclaiming that he felt his whole body burning. After 43 minutes of pain and writhing, Lockett eventually died of a heart attack. 

The following year, Oklahoma called off the execution of Richard Glossip shortly before it was set to put him to death after realizing that it had ordered potassium acetate instead of potassium chloride and had unknowingly used the wrong drug in the execution of Charles Warner earlier that year. 

During the 2021 execution of John Grant by lethal injection using the drug midazolam, witnesses reported that Grant vomited several times after receiving the drugs, signaling another botch.