•Arizona Execution of Joseph Wood Took Nearly Two Hours
Arizona Execution of Joseph Wood Took Nearly Two Hours
An Arizona execution took nearly two hours on Wednesday, and the prisoner's lawyers said he gasped and snorted for an hour.
The execution of double-murderer Joseph Wood which Arizona carried out with a lethal-injection it had never before tried is certain to fan the debate over how U.S. states carry out the death penalty.
"I've never witnessed an execution that took that long," defense lawyer Dale Baich told NBC News. "The state of Arizona today conducted a failed experiment."
Baich said there was no sound in the witness room, but "he was gasping and snorting for an hour and 40 minutes or so."
"It was horrible to watch," he added.
Midway through the execution, Baich filed papers asking a federal court to stop the execution and order prison officials to try to resuscitate Wood. But before the court could act, Wood was pronounced dead.
"The execution commenced at 1:52 p.m. at the Arizona State Prison Complex (ASPC) - Florence. He was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m," a statement from Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said.
The statement did not say what problems the execution team had encountered, but Wood's lawyers painted a macabre picture.
"At 1:57 p.m ADC reported that Mr. Wood was sedated, but at 2:02 he began to breathe. At 2:03 his mouth moved. Mr. Wood has continued to breathe since that time," they wrote in court papers.
"He has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour. At 3:02 p.m....staff rechecked for sedation. He is still alive. This execution has violated Mr. Woods Eighth Amendment right to be executed in the absence of cruel and unusual punishment."
The ACLU called for a moratorium on executions until states can ensure that their lethal injections will work as intended.
Its time for Arizona and the other states still using lethal injection to admit that this experiment with unreliable drugs is a failure," the group said in a statement. "Instead of hiding lethal injection under layers of foolish secrecy, these states need to show us where the drugs are come from. Until they can give assurances that the drugs will work as intended, they must stop future executions.
Arizona Department of Corrections via AP file Wood who was condemned to die for fatally shooting his girlfriend and her father in 1989 had challenged the execution on the grounds that the state was violating the First Amendment by keeping the source of the lethal-injection drugs secret.
An appeals panel agreed with him, but the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the stay of execution. The Arizona Supreme Court briefly delayed the execution on Wednesday morning, but ultimately gave the state the green light.
Wood, 55, was scheduled to be killed with a combination of midazolam and hydromorphone, the same drugs used in an Ohio execution in which the inmate, Dennis McGuire, seemed to struggle for air and took 25 minutes to die.
His execution date had been put on hold several times as the case wound its way through last-minute appeals. One of those decisions was notable for a dissent in which the chief judge of a federal appeals court said the guillotine would be better than lethal injection for executions.
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This is not the first timesomething like this has happened.
Can't grasp how come lethal injection is so problematic... junkies manage to OD every day in this country without even trying. If we've already decided someone deserves to be snuffed, why not just cruise the ghetto for some high-grade smack and get it over with? Any dope dealer in Phoenix or Tucson could have supplied shit that would put the condemned out in a matter of minutes...
I'm sorry, I just can't work up any sympathy for these killers who do not give one rat's ass what they put their victims through. He killed two people with no care or concern for what their last breath would be like. We waste entirely too much energy trying to give these killers a peaceful death.
Lethal injections have been practiced for years, and I don't remember hearing about this type of problem back then. Did they change the drug they used to use or something?
And the said dealer would have made a bundle!!
I can't feel too much sympathy either. This past May my Nephew got stabbed to death trying to stop a fight, and it was not accidental. A19 year old stabbed my Nephew in the abdomen and then in the heart. The 19 year old will probably onlyget 40-60 years with no chance of parole.,
pffft..
John, I gotta agree with you on this one. I would have no problem with the guillotine being used. Gruesome, but it wouldn't take 2 hours and I would bet they wouldn't feel a thing.
Well, call me bitter, heartless ,cruel or whatever, but the fact that my Nephew's killer gets to live just makes my Italian blood boil!! His stabbing was NOT accidental. So I would care less if it took this kid 4 weeks to die..but guess what??He will probably get 40 to 60 years behind bars.
Well, all I can say is, the 40 to 60 years he is behind bars, I hope his Cellie is "Big Bubba", and Bubba introduces him allof his friends. I cant even think straight when I think about this, but, I do understand what you are saying.
What I find so strange id that these governments find it so difficult to find a way to kill people.
So really "stuck on stupid"...
I don't think this wasa problem years ago, at least I never heard about it. If it wasn't a problem ,I wonder whathappened.
It's mostlythe craziness of the whole concept of 'humane execution', Krish... one of those ideas the English language can express, except that it really doesn't make sense. A guy kills two (or 5 or 15) people, he's guilty and so dangerous and/or detestable that we're gonna kill him, but somehow that has to be 'humane', cause we don't want to think that the SOB might suffer or feel pain or even an undue amount of anxiety in the process. That's fucking nuts... If indeed the death penalty is warranted, don't piss around trying to invent some concept that makes it 'humane' so that we can maintain a pretense of moral superiority about it.
Maybe we could sentence people to 27/7 Talk Radio until we bore 'em to death???
no longer manufactures it and companies in other countries where it is manufactured....well, golly gee, now killers have to suffer?? Well, that's just awful...s/c
(like I said, I'm very angry these days since my Nephew's murder)
Ordinarily I'm a passive person, but my Nephew's murder got myItalian blood boiling!
Good luck with that huh? Like I said, I'm in a "bitter" place right now, I'm actually a passive person.