Botched execution in Arizona takes 2 hours to complete

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer ordered a review of the state’s execution process after a convicted double murderer gasped and snorted for more than an hour and a half before his death Wednesday.

“It took Joseph Wood two hours to die, and he gasped and struggled to breathe for about an hour and 40 minutes. We will renew our efforts to get information about the manufacturer of drugs as well as how Arizona came up with the experimental formula of drugs it used today,” attorney Dale Baich said in a statement.

Joseph Wood’s prolonged death comes on the heels of a flurry of court battles concerning the constitutionality of the state’s refusal to disclose the identity of the supplier of its lethal drugs, and the case echoes a similarly botched execution in Oklahoma just months ago.

In ordering the review, Brewer said she was concerned by the length of time the administered drug protocol took to kill Wood.

“One thing is certain, however,” Brewer’s statement continued, “Wood died in a lawful manner and by eyewitness and medical accounts he did not suffer. 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.”

Other state officials in the attorney general’s office said they believed Wood had not suffered. Michael Kiefer, an eyewitness reporter for The Arizona Republic, said he counted 660 gasps taken by Wood before he slipped into unconsciousness.

“Usually it takes about 10 minutes, the person goes to sleep. This was not that,” he told reporters afterward. “It started off looking as if it was going alright but then obviously something didn’t go right. It took two hours.”

Arizona and Oklahoma represent a dwindling number of active death-penalty states that have been scrambling in recent years to procure the drugs necessary to carry out death sentences, amid boycotts from European manufacturers and reticence from licensed physicians. Oklahoma’s botched attempt forced the state to temporarily halt its executions and order a review of its death-penalty procedures.

“It’s time for Arizona and the other states still using lethal injection to admit that this experiment with unreliable drugs is a failure,” the American Civil Liberties Union 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,” it read. Read more about the story here.