Phoenix – Arizona Inmate Takes Nearly Two Hours To Die In Botched Execution

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    This undated file photo provided by the Arizona Department of Corrections shows inmate Joseph Rudolph Wood. Arizona Department of Corrections, File/AP PhotoPhoenix – An Arizona inmate took almost two hours to die by lethal injection on Wednesday and his lawyers said he “gasped and snorted” before succumbing in the latest botched execution to raise questions about the death penalty in the United States.

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    The execution of convicted double murderer Joseph Wood began at 1:52 p.m. local time at a state prison complex, and the 55-year-old was pronounced dead just shy of two hours later at 3:49 p.m., the Arizona attorney general’s office said.

    During that time, his lawyers filed an unsuccessful emergency appeal in federal courts that sought to have the execution halted and their client given life-saving medical treatment.

    The appeal said the procedure violated his constitutional right to be executed without suffering cruel and unusual punishment.

    “He gasped and struggled to breath for about an hour and 40 minutes,” said one of Wood’s attorneys, Dale Baich.

    “Arizona appears to have joined several other states who have been responsible for an entirely preventable horror: a bungled execution. The public should hold its officials responsible.”

    Wood had been one of six death row inmates who sued Arizona last month arguing that secrecy surrounding the drugs used in other botched executions in Ohio and Oklahoma violated their rights.

    But on Wednesday, the Arizona Supreme Court cleared the way for him to be put to death, lifting a hold after reviewing a last-minute appeal that involved demands for more information about the lethal drug cocktail to be used in the execution.

    DRAWN-OUT DEATH

    The execution had previously been put on hold by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said on Saturday that Wood could suffer “irreparable harm” unless the state divulged information about the drugs and the qualifications of the medical staff conducting the execution.

    Anti-death penalty campaigners expressed horror over Wood’s drawn-out death. Cassandra Stubbs, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project, said Arizona had broken constitutional rights, and the bounds of basic decency.

    “It’s time for Arizona and the other states still using lethal injection to admit that this experiment with unreliable drugs is a failure,” she said in a statement.

    Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said Wood’s execution had been shocking, cruel and entirely predictable.

    “Americans have had enough of the barbarism,” she said.

    In January, convicted rapist and murderer Dennis McGuire was put to death in Ohio using a sedative-painkiller mix of midazolam and hydromorphone, the first such combination administered for a lethal injection in the United States. The execution took about 25 minutes to complete, with McGuire reportedly convulsing and gasping for breath.

    In Oklahoma in April, convicted killer Clayton Lockett writhed in pain and a needle became dislodged during his lethal injection at a state prison. The execution was halted, but Lockett died about 30 minutes later of a heart attack.


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    21 Comments
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    dermunkatcher
    dermunkatcher
    9 years ago

    And how long exactly did his 2 victims suffer?
    Maybe a few minutes less, or maybe a few minutes more, but it seems that this piece of **** didn’t care much about their constitutional rights.

    9 years ago

    Firing squads should do.

    DACON9
    DACON9
    9 years ago

    HIS INNOCENT VICTIM GASPED AND SNORTED
    yeah? and?

    yochy
    yochy
    9 years ago

    ah i love this method it works wonders way too good for this piece of trash lets copy this procedure for the next one please

    Mark Levin
    Mark Levin
    9 years ago

    “The appeal said the procedure violated his constitutional right to be executed without suffering cruel and unusual punishment.”

    Didn’t his victim have the right of LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS? Quit giving me those crocodile tears because i don’t give a hoot.

    9 years ago

    “He gasped and struggled to breath for about an hour and 40 minutes,”

    I don’t care!

    HeshyEkes
    HeshyEkes
    9 years ago

    Put them down like a dog. Seems simple to me. Deep sleep, very deep & theyre dead

    PaulinSaudi
    PaulinSaudi
    9 years ago

    There can be little doubt that a large enough firing squad should do it. In the same way, there can be little doubt these lethal injections of miscellaneous drugs by random people is cruel and so is prohibited.

    wsbrgh
    wsbrgh
    9 years ago

    What’s wrong with firing squad, beheading? This lethal injection is against the US constitution as “cruel and unusual punishment”.

    pushkin
    pushkin
    9 years ago

    What irreparable harm he will suffer?

    PaulinSaudi
    PaulinSaudi
    9 years ago

    Irreparable harm is not the standard here. The standard is cruelty.

    qazxc
    qazxc
    9 years ago

    My heart bleeds borscht for him.

    9 years ago

    Did the execution staff prep his skin with antiseptic before administering the injection?

    Why all the worry about this guys comfort of lack of it? Did his extra minutes of breathing have a negative effect on the outcome? Did it prevent the staff from getting back to work and fulfilling their other responsibilities?

    I suggest that the method of execution be burial. No one will ever know if they breathed, snorted, gasped, or whatever. We’re way too busy forgetting about victims, and protecting the rights of the convicted criminal. This is backwards.

    9 years ago

    I must admit that I’m quite shocked by almost all the comments here, presumably all by frummies. Do you have no respect for the law? This person violated the law, and was duly held accountable and was punished in accordance with the law. Just because he broke the law does not give us the right to break the law in punishing him.

    I have a strong feeling you all would be singing a different tune if he was Jewish, even a freie Jew.

    JoeField1
    JoeField1
    9 years ago

    I never know that Orthodox Jews are not only willing to take someone’s life, but they are clamoring for cruelty. When a fellow Jew Martin Grossman’s life was taken the majority of you, cried foul. What A bunch of self-centered hypocrites.

    Wise-Guy
    Wise-Guy
    9 years ago

    While I don’t shed a tear for a cruel murderer’s suffering, I really don’t understand the entire problem.

    People are cut open on the operating table every day all over the world. They do not experience pain because they are deeply unconscious. (The pain begins when the patients wake up, until they recuperate from the operation.)

    And people sometimes commit suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills.

    So what’s the problem? If the convict is put into a deep sleep just like before an operation, what difference does it make if his unconscious body was gasping and snorting? He didn’t experience pain or distress!

    Furthermore, once the convict is out cold, why are special “cocktails” needed?
    At that point he can be injected with anything! (e.g. high doses of morphine, or Cyanide, or even Kerosene or rat-poison. Maybe even simple air-bubbles!)

    He’ll be dead in no time.

    p.s. I’m not being cynical. I think my question is legitimate. (Albeit possibly ignorant from a legal or medical point-of-view.)

    rabbiyisroel
    rabbiyisroel
    9 years ago

    It very unnerving that frum people, who allegedly understand the need for a sacrosanct set of laws for proper governance can have such little respect for those mandated by the United States. The US Constitution is the Torah Shebichtav of America. The founding Father of America (its avot) mandated that there be no cruel and unusual punishment. Without this provision, punishment could be given the way ISIS is curently doing.
    Without good governance, and our tefilot for it and our respect for it , people would descend into barbarism.
    Perhaps the critics here would feel more comfortable being Jews in Syria or Iraq or Libya so as to experience first hand why America has such a mandate

    PaulinSaudi
    PaulinSaudi
    9 years ago

    Well. look at it another way. The taxpayers are paying these guys to do a fast, painless execution. Even if you do not care, that is what we are paying them to do. They screwed that up. It was a fairly simple job, and they could not manage it.

    As I mentioned elsewhere, the smartest people do not become prison guards.

    JOTHEPROFESSOR
    JOTHEPROFESSOR
    9 years ago

    I am shocked that no one remembers that in Halacha the principle that executions should be done in a humane fashion is supported by the Pasuk “VeAhavta lerayachu…”

    9 years ago

    I don’t understand the protest against some of the comments. The system for execution that is established needs to be painless, etc. Sometimes, things just do not work as planned. These exceptions to the rule are being handled as if the rule is faulty. Maybe so. But probably not. The methods of execution have been developed, proposed, debated, and voted into law. They have also been used successfully. I have no problem with returning to examine the protocols. But the outcry about execution being barbaric, etc. are not just over the top, but wrongly focused on looking to please the criminal without regard to the huge breaches of morality and law committed by the criminal. I may not be right in wanting to torture a criminal in the execution, but I do not need to be overcautious about the process if it is anomalous.