One Year After Botched Execution, Many States Still Haven’t Resumed Executions

On July 23, 2014, Arizona’s execution of Joseph Wood was botched, taking nearly two hours from the time the state began injecting him with lethal drugs until he was finally pronounced dead. Witnesses reported that Wood gasped more than 640 times during the course of the execution, and an official report later revealed that he was injected with 15 doses of the execution drugs. Michael Kiefer, a reporter for the Arizona Republic, who witnessed Wood’s execution, described it, saying, “He gulped like a fish on land. The movement was like a piston: The mouth opened, the chest rose, the stomach convulsed.” Arizona used a combination of midazolam, the drug recently reviewed by the Supreme Court in Glossip v. Gross, and hyrdromorphone, a narcotic. Wood’s lawyer, Dale Baich, describing the execution, said “The experiement failed.” The same drug protocol had been used in Ohio’s botched execution of Dennis McGuire earlier in 2014 and witnesses to an October 2014 execution by Florida using midazolam reported that the death took longer than usual. In the year since Wood’s execution, Arizona has not carried out any executions as a stay issued by a federal judge remains in place. In that time, Oklahoma and Florida have used midazolam in a total of three executions, with Charles Warner in Oklahoma saying “My body is on fire.” Both states temporarily put executions on hold while the Supreme Court review was underway, but indicate they intend to resume executions now that the use of midazolam has been upheld. An Oklahoma federal court has scheduled a trial for 2016 on Oklahoma’s use of midazolam. All other executions since Wood’s have used a one-drug protocol of pentobarbital, likely obtained from compounding pharmacies, since the primary manufacturer of the drug opposes its use in executions. Ohio delayed all executions until at least 2016 to review executions procedures, and executions in Tennessee are on hold because of legal challenges to its lethal injection protocols. Georgia is conducting an investigation into problems with execution drugs and has not set new execution dates as a result.

(M. Kiefer, “Arizona inmate injected 15 times, records show,” Arizona Republic, August 1, 2014; M. Kiefer, “Reporter describes Arizona execution: 2 hours, 640 gasps,” Arizona Republic, July 24 2014.) See Lethal Injection and Upcoming Executions for additional information on stays and holds in various states.