Arizona Botches Execution of Joseph Wood

The exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood III in Arizona on July 23 took near­ly two hours, with wit­ness­es report­ing that Wood gasped and snort­ed more than 600 times dur­ing the pro­ce­dure. Wood was exe­cut­ed using mida­zo­lam and hyr­dro­mor­phone, the same drug pro­to­col used in January’s botched exe­cu­tion of Dennis McGuire.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit had stayed Wood’s exe­cu­tion and ordered the state to release infor­ma­tion about the source of the lethal injec­tion drugs and the train­ing of those who would car­ry out the exe­cu­tion, but the stay was lift­ed by the U.S. Supreme Court on July 22, allow­ing the state to maintain secrecy. 

Attorneys for Wood tried to file an emer­gency request to halt the exe­cu­tion because Wood was still awake an hour into the pro­ce­dure. Dale Baich, one of Wood’s attor­neys, said, ​“I’ve wit­nessed a num­ber of exe­cu­tions before and I’ve nev­er seen any­thing like this. Nor has an exe­cu­tion that I observed tak­en this long.” 

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer ordered a review of the exe­cu­tion, say­ing she was ​“con­cerned by the length of time” that it took. The direc­tor of the Department of Corrections said they will con­duct a full review and are wait­ing on results of a tox­i­col­o­gy study and autopsy.