The
execution of convicted murderer Joseph Wood in Phoenix lasted almost two hours.
His lawyer filed emergency appeals, saying his client was "gasping and
snorting." The state's governor pledged an investigation.
Deutsche Welle, 24 July 2014
Joseph Wood
survived nearly two hours after receiving a lethal injection and gasped for
breath for around 90 minutes, in the latest botched execution to renew questions about the death penalty in the US. The 55-year-old, convicted of a
double murder in 1989, took so long to die that his lawyers had time to file an
unsuccessful emergency appeal with multiple federal courts.
"He
has been gasping and snorting for more than an hour," Wood's lawyers wrote
in a legal filing demanding the courts stop the process and provide medical treatment.
"He is still alive."
Wood's
execution began at 1:52 p.m. local time on Wednesday at a state prison complex,
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne's office said he was pronounced dead 117
minutes later.
The
Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan said he consulted with medical
officials throughout the process, "and was assured unequivocally that the
inmate was comatose and never in pain or distress." Yet defense lawyer
Dale Baich called it a botched execution that should have lasted 10 minutes.
"Arizona
appears to have joined several other states who have been responsible for an
entirely preventable horror - a bungled execution," Baich said. "The
public should hold its officials responsible and demand to make this process
more transparent."
In Ohio
this year, an inmate gasped in a similar fashion for almost half an hour before
dying. Arizona was using the same drugs - the sedative midazolam and the
painkiller hydromorphone - that were used in the Ohio execution. A different
drug combination was employed in an Oklahoma execution where the inmate died of
a heart attack minutes after prison officials halted the execution because the
drugs had not been administered properly.
Prior to
his execution, Wood was among six death row inmates who filed a failed appeal,
denied by the US Supreme Court, demanding more information on the means of his
lethal injection: including who would manufacture and supply the drugs, and the
medical qualifications of those administering the injections.
Brewer
pledges investigation
Arizona
Governor Jan Brewer expressed concern at the length of time Wood took to die
and said she had ordered the state's Department of Corrections to review the
execution process.
"One
thing is certain, however, inmate Wood died in a lawful manner and by
eyewitness and medical accounts he did not suffer," Republican Governor
Brewer said in a statement. "This is in stark comparison to the gruesome,
vicious suffering that he inflicted on his two victims, and the lifetime of
suffering he has caused their family."
Family
members were present at the execution, and reportedly angered by Wood looking
at them and smiling during his last words.
The US is
among a gradually shrinking number of countries that still uses capital
punishment. Amnesty International recorded at least one execution in 22
countries in 2013, adding that executions likely took place in Egypt and Syria
but could not be confirmed. Ninety-eight countries have abolished the death
penalty altogether and 140 have scrapped it in practice.
Abolition
of the death penalty is a pre-condition for entry into the European Union and
is described on the bloc's website as "a key objective for the Union's
human rights policy."
msh/dr (AP, Reuters)
Death
penalty opponents protest ahead of the execution of Joseph Rudolph
Wood at the
state prison in Florence, Arizona. Photograph: AP
|
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