On August 1, the Arizona Department of Corrections (DOC) released 330 pages of doc­u­ments relat­ed to the exe­cu­tion of Joseph Wood on July 23. Although not a report on why the exe­cu­tion took near­ly 2 hours to com­plete, the doc­u­ments reveal that Wood was inject­ed with 15 con­sec­u­tive dos­es (50 mg each) of mida­zo­lam and hydro­mor­phone, far more than indi­cat­ed in the state’s pro­to­col. Dale Baich, an attor­ney for Wood, said, ​“The Arizona exe­cu­tion pro­to­col explic­it­ly states that a pris­on­er will be exe­cut­ed using 50 mil­ligrams of hydro­mor­phone and 50 mil­ligrams of mida­zo­lam. The exe­cu­tion logs released today by the Arizona Department of Corrections show that the exper­i­men­tal drug pro­to­col did not work as promised.” Prison offi­cials had esti­mat­ed that the drugs would take about 10 min­utes to kill Wood. Charles Ryan, direc­tor of the DOC, respond­ed to calls for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of the exe­cu­tion, say­ing, ​“I am com­mit­ted to a thor­ough, trans­par­ent and com­pre­hen­sive review process. This will be an author­i­ta­tive review to ensure that fact-based con­clu­sions are reached regard­ing every aspect of this pro­ce­dure, includ­ing the length of time it took for the exe­cu­tion to be lawfully completed.”

(F. Santos, ​“Executed Arizona Inmate Got 15 Times Standard Dose, Lawyers Say,” New York Times, August 1, 2014). Read the state Execution Log. See Lethal Injection.

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