Arizona offi­cials have agreed not to sched­ule any exe­cu­tions until a fed­er­al court chal­lenge to the state’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­col and secre­cy pol­i­cy is resolved. U.S. District Court Judge Neil V. Wake had pre­vi­ous­ly put the law­suit on hold while Arizona rewrote its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col. He said the exe­cu­tion hold was nec­es­sary to pre­vent what he called ​“cri­sis lit­i­ga­tion” — arti­fi­cial­ly forc­ing the court to decide issues in the 60 days before an exe­cu­tion was sched­uled to occur. Such lit­i­ga­tion, he said, did not allow for ade­quate con­sid­er­a­tion of the issues. With the state’s agree­ment not to set new exe­cu­tion dates, Judge Wake will now allow the lit­i­ga­tion to pro­ceed. Inmates are suing the state to obtain infor­ma­tion about the source of the drugs that will be used in exe­cu­tions. In July 2014, Arizona used mida­zo­lam and hydro­mor­phone from anony­mous sources to exe­cute Joseph Wood. Arizona’s secre­cy laws pre­vent­ed Wood from obtain­ing key details of how the state intend­ed to exe­cute him. Wood’s exe­cu­tion took 2 hours, dur­ing which wit­ness­es report­ed that he gasped and snort­ed more than 600 times. Arizona lat­er attempt­ed to import sodi­um thiopen­tal to use in a three-drug pro­to­col, but the ship­ment was halt­ed by the Food and Drug Administration, which said the drug was being imported illegally.

(G. Grado, ​“Arizona exe­cu­tions on hold as death penal­ty law­suit gains new life,” Arizona Capitol Times, December 14, 2015.) See Lethal Injection.

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