Lethal Injections Suffering

Yesterday, the US Supreme Court signed off on Arizona’s execution of 55-year-old Joseph Wood. The Death Row prisoner was sentenced to death after murdering his girlfriend and her father twenty-five years ago outside of an auto repair shop.

Despite three prolonged executions this year, the executioners used the same drug to put Wood to death. In January, Ohio prisoner Dennis McGuire struggled to stay alive for a record-high 26 minutes after being injected. Three months later, Clayton Lockett gasped for air and went into convulsions before security closed the blinds and blocked the view of the witnesses. Lockett eventually died of a heart attack.

Wood was a member of the Air Force for six years. He suffered from alcohol abuse sustained multiple head injuries before he committed murder. And regardless of the prior botched injections, the Supreme Court and the State of Arizona went ahead with the execution as planned.

Astrid Galvan, a reporter for the Associated Press, wrote about her first hand account of the procedure. About ten minutes after the injection was administered, Wood began gasping for air. He continued gasping repeatedly, so much so that administrators walked in and checked on him several times. At one point, someone used a microphone to inform the people watching that he was still sedated, despite his gasping and wheezing for air.

After this dragged on, Wood’s lawyers called upon federal and state courts to step in and stop the execution. The Arizona Supreme Court took a call from one of the lawyers to hear him out. While the hearing was taking place, one hour and 57 minutes after the injection, Wood took his last breath.

Dale Baich, a defense attorney, called it a botched execution that should have only taken 10 minutes.

While the scene of the execution was difficult to witness, the victim’s family said it was fair and just.

Jeanne Brown, sister of Wood’s deceased girlfriend, said, “What I saw today with him being executed, it is nothing compared to what happened on Aug. 7, 1989. What’s excruciating is seeing your father lying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister lying in a pool of blood.”

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer asked the Corrections Department to review the process and report to her. Brewer said that Wood “died in a lawful manner, and by eyewitness and medical accounts he did not suffer.”