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.

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