RESOURCES: Newspaper Series Explores Arizona’s Recent Death Penalty History

In a detailed five-part series titled ​“Poorly exe­cut­ed: How Arizona has failed at car­ry­ing out the death penal­ty,” the Arizona Mirror explores the last 16 years of Arizona’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The series focus­es on con­tro­ver­sies sur­round­ing the exe­cu­tions them­selves, includ­ing changes to the drug pro­to­col, the use of inex­pe­ri­enced or unqual­i­fied per­son­nel, and the state secre­cy sur­round­ing the process. It also looks into oth­er major issues in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, such as inno­cence, costs, and racial bias.

The series begins with the sto­ry of Robert Comer, whose 2007 exe­cu­tion was per­formed by a doc­tor who has been banned from per­form­ing exe­cu­tions in Missouri and the fed­er­al sys­tem because he was impro­vis­ing the dos­es of drugs. In sub­se­quent install­ments, the series describes Arizona’s attempts to ille­gal­ly import exe­cu­tion drugs, its deci­sion to use a new two-drug pro­to­col that had caused prob­lems in Ohio just months before, and the sub­se­quent eight-year pause on exe­cu­tions. It con­cludes with Governor Katie Hobbs’ recent announce­ment that she will halt exe­cu­tions while an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion is con­duct­ed into what she called the state’s ​“his­to­ry of mis­man­aged exe­cu­tions” and ​“lack of transparency.” 

The authors of the series are long­time jour­nal­ist Michael Kiefer and Dale Baich, a cap­i­tal defense attor­ney and for­mer head of the Arizona Capital Habeas Unit, both of whom have exten­sive expe­ri­ence with these issues and have wit­nessed mul­ti­ple exe­cu­tions. The series can be accessed here:

Part 1: Witness to an execution
Part 2: The ​‘Golden Age of exe­cu­tions’ comes to an end
Part 3: IVs and ironies
Part 4: ​‘The exper­i­ment failed,’ halt­ing exe­cu­tions in Arizona
Part 5: The pol­i­tics behind executions

For more infor­ma­tion on exe­cu­tion secre­cy, see DPIC’s 2018 report, Behind the Curtain.