Witness: In ​‘Surreal’ Event, Possibly Innocent Death-Row Prisoner Helped Arizona Executioners Find a Vein After They Failed to Set IV Line

At his June 8, 2022 exe­cu­tion in Arizona, Frank Atwood helped prison offi­cials find a suit­able vein for the IV line that would admin­is­ter the lethal-injec­tion drugs to end his life. Jimmy Jenkins, a reporter at the Arizona Republic who wit­nessed the exe­cu­tion, called the expe­ri­ence of watch­ing Atwood direct the state to his vein ​“sur­re­al.” He wrote in his account of the exe­cu­tion that ​“I have wit­nessed life. And I have wit­nessed death. But noth­ing could have pre­pared me for the sur­re­al spec­ta­cle I wit­nessed dur­ing the exe­cu­tion of Frank Atwood.”

Jenkins took read­ers through the day of the exe­cu­tion with a step-by-step account of the exe­cu­tion in his June 8, 2022 sto­ry ​“Behind the black cur­tain: Republic reporter describes ​‘sur­re­al’ Frank Atwood exe­cu­tion.” After the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADOC) refused to let Jenkins attend the exe­cu­tion as a media wit­ness, Atwood invit­ed Jenkins to join his group of wit­ness­es — which includ­ed Atwood’s wife of 30 years and his attorneys. 

Atwood, who main­tained his inno­cence through the years between his death sen­tence and exe­cu­tion, suf­fered from a degen­er­a­tive spinal con­di­tion and need­ed to be pushed in a wheel­chair to the exe­cu­tion cham­ber and propped on a med­ical pil­low dur­ing the exe­cu­tion. In sum­ma­riz­ing his expe­ri­ence wit­ness­ing the exe­cu­tion, Jenkins wrote, ​“I have looked behind the cur­tain of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and seen it for what it tru­ly is: a frail old man lift­ed from a wheel­chair onto a hand­i­cap acces­si­ble lethal injec­tion gur­ney; ner­vous hands and per­spir­ing faces try­ing to find a vein; nee­dles punc­tur­ing skin; liq­uid drugs flood­ing a man’s exis­tence and drown­ing it out.”

“After a few min­utes and what appeared to be sev­er­al attempts, the exe­cu­tion team insert­ed an IV and catheter into Atwood‘s left arm. Then they wheeled the cart to the oth­er side of his body, and told him they were going insert an IV into his femoral vein,” as they had done to estab­lish an IV line in Clarence Dixon’s body dur­ing his botched exe­cu­tion one month prior.

“Why?” Jenkins records Atwood ask­ing. ​“They draw blood from my right arm with no prob­lem all the time.” Jenkins reports that the team did not say why they want­ed to put a sec­ond line into his femoral vein, but they told Atwood they would try to place it in his right arm, as he had sug­gest­ed. ​“The exe­cu­tion team tried and failed to get the IV into his right arm sev­er­al times,” Jenkins report­ed. ​“One of the exe­cu­tion team mem­bers shook his head in frus­tra­tion. ​‘I don’t under­stand,’ Atwood said, ​”they’ve nev­er had this problem before.’”

After the exe­cu­tion team again sug­gest­ed plac­ing the sec­ond IV into Atwood’s femoral vein, the con­demned man sug­gest­ed, ​“Could you try the hand? … They have been able to go in there before as well.” In a tweet after the exe­cu­tion express­ing his aston­ish­ment, Jenkins wrote: ​“The IV team mem­bers looked at each oth­er, looked at Atwood, looked at each oth­er again, and said ​‘Sure, we‘ll give that a try.’ ONCE AGAIN THE EXECUTION TEAM MEMBERS RELIED ON ADVICE FROM THE MAN THEY WERE TRYING TO EXECUTE.”

Jenkins relat­ed the state­ment of a for­mer ADOC exe­cu­tion­er that no prison med­ical staff par­tic­i­pat­ed in exe­cu­tions because of the Hippocratic Oath. ADOC exe­cu­tion teams, the ADOC exe­cu­tion­er indi­cat­ed, were made up of prison employ­ees who used pros­thet­ic arms to prac­tice and who had lit­tle to no medical background.

“Atwood’s sug­ges­tion to find a vein in his right hand proved effec­tive,” Jenkins wrote. ​“They were able to get the sec­ond IV in and secure the catheter. They taped every­thing down, attached the tubes that con­nect to the drugs, and left the room. By my esti­mate, the process took about 30 min­utes.” Atwood was exe­cut­ed after direct­ing the exe­cu­tion team to his vein.

“People told me I might expe­ri­ence shock, but watch­ing the state of Arizona put Frank Atwood to death for the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of 8‑year-old Vicki Lynne Hoskinson did more than stun me — it changed me, fun­da­men­tal­ly, as a per­son,” he wrote. ​“I have writ­ten exten­sive­ly about Atwood’s case. I lis­tened to the victim’s fam­i­ly talk about the pain and suf­fer­ing the mur­der of Vicki Lynne, and sub­se­quent court case, caused them — the gen­er­a­tional trau­ma it left with their fam­i­ly and the com­mu­ni­ty of Tucson. I talked with every attor­ney I know about the process and asked ques­tions about what I was about to wit­ness. But I was not pre­pared to see the act of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment car­ried out in front of me.”

“The state of Arizona con­ducts exe­cu­tions in all of our names. I thought I under­stood the weight of that process, but now I feel the real­i­ty of it. We killed a man today. I killed a man today. And I will live with that real­iza­tion for the rest of my life,” Jenkins concluded.