| AP reporter's account of Arizona execution By ASTRID GALVAN — Jul. 23, 2014 11:38 PM EDT FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) — Joseph Rudolph Wood looked around the death chamber and glanced at the doctors as they made preparations for his execution, locating the proper veins and inserting two lines into his arms. [...] Officials administered the lethal drugs at 1:52 p.m. Wood's eyes closed. About 10 minutes later, the gasping began. Wood's jaw dropped, his chest expanded, and he let out a gasp. The gasps repeated every five to 12 seconds. They went on and on, hundreds of times. An administrator checked on him a half-dozen times. He could be heard snoring loudly when an administrator turned on a microphone to inform the gallery that Wood was still sedated, despite the audible sounds. As the episode dragged on, Wood's lawyers frantically drew up an emergency legal appeal, asking federal and state courts to step in and stop the execution. | "He has been gasping for more than an hour," the lawyers pleaded in their filings. "He is still alive." The Arizona Supreme Court convened an impromptu telephone hearing with a defense lawyer and attorney for the state to decide what to do. Wood took his last breath at 3:37 p.m. Twelve minutes later, Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles L. Ryan declared Wood dead. The state court was informed of the death while its hearing was underway. It took one hour and 57 minutes for the execution to be completed, and Wood was gasping for more than an hour and a half of that time. The execution quickly re-ignited the death penalty debate as critics denounced it as cruel and unusual punishment and said it raised grave questions about the two-drug combination Arizona uses for lethal injections. Wood had waged an intense, last-minute legal battle that challenged the state over key information about who supplies the drugs and how they are administered. [...] ... Full article ... @... Source - AP Big Story - here. |
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I don't support government execution of its citizens.
However, if you're going to have a barbaric death penalty state, how about using a bullet to the back of the head instead of watching the condemned die gasping for almost 2 hours?
I also don't see how the US can play at presenting itself as some righteous, humanitarian saviour of the world, when this is how they treat their own citizens.
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