A death row prisoner in Arizona took almost two hours to die after another botched execution by lethal injection in the US.
56-year-old Joseph Wood gasped for air and struggled in his restraints for about an hour and 40 minutes after he was injected by a cocktail of midazolam and hydromorphone at Florence State Prison, described by his lawyers to CNN as “experimental”.
Wood’s legal team previously warned that the concoction could lead to an “agonising death”, and filed for an emergency appeal to halt the execution as he writhed in agony during an execution which they say amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment”.
However, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer claimed that Wood “did not suffer” in comparison to the suffering he inflicted on the family of his ex-girlfriend and her father, who he murdered in 1989.
The pain and suffering inflicted on Wood by the state has reopened the debate about the drugs used in executions, with this the third case of a botched execution by lethal injection this year.
US states with the death penalty have been struggling to find a combination of drugs to execute death row prisoners after the EU banned the export of short-acting barbiturate general anaesthetic sodium thiopental for purposes of execution and no US company produces the drug.
The Danish manufacturer of an alternative short-acting barbiturate called Pentobarbital also banned its sale for use in executions, leaving some US states to suspend the use of the death penalty and others, such as Arizona, experimenting to find new alternatives.
