BOTCHED, REALLY BOTCHED EXECUTION

Arizona executioners injected Joseph Wood 15 times during his two-hour drawn-out execution

There’s only one way to put it. The July 23 Arizona execution of Joseph Wood was botched, really botched. An execution that should have taken minutes dragged on for two hours.

Wood’s attorneys have obtained the execution logs of the Arizona Department of Corrections. The logs reveal:

Wood was administered midazolam and hydromorphone in 50-milligram increments 15 times between 1:53 p.m. and 3:45 p.m., for a total of 750 milligrams of each drug. He was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m.

Dale Baich, one of Wodd’s attorneys, released the following statement:

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 shows that the experimental drug protocol did not work as promised. Instead of the one dose as required under the protocol, ADC injected 15 separate doses of the drug combination, resulting in the most prolonged execution in recent memory.

As I understand it, this was the first time that Arizona used the lethal drug combination of midazolam and hydromorphone. 750 milligrams of each drug is simply astounding. Anesthesiologists use only 2 milligrams each of midazolam and hydromorphone during prolonged surgeries. 50 milligrams would probably have snuffed an elephant within minutes.

An Arizona Republic reporter who witnessed the execution said that Wood gasped for air 660 times during the two-hour proceedings.

The death penalty states that use a combination of lethal drugs to carry out executions would be well advised to switch to a single dose of pentobarbital. Texas has used pentobarbital as its only lethal drug in several executions and they have all been carried on without a hitch.

Americans have becomes so squeamish that they barely tolerate executions in which vicious murderers are put to sleep like a beloved pet. One more botched execution, like that of Joseph Wood, and you can probably kiss the death penalty goodbye.