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After botching a series of executions by lethal injection, the State of Alabama is planning to use nitrogen gas to put condemned prisoners to death. The first execution will amount to a human experiment, because neither Alabama nor any other state has ever tried to kill people this way. Late last month, prison guards distributed the state’s new execution protocol to prisoners in solitary confinement on Alabama’s death row. One hundred and sixty men and five women await execution in Alabama. They would be secured to a gurney, their nose and mouth would be covered by a mask, and nitrogen...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A condemned Ohio killer who survived a 2009 botched execution is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that a second attempt to put him to death would be unconstitutional. Lawyers for death row inmate Romell Broom argue that giving the state prisons agency a second chance would amount to cruel and unusual punishment and double jeopardy. A divided Ohio Supreme Court rejected Broom's arguments in March. Broom's attorneys appealed that ruling earlier this month to the U.S. Supreme Court and filed notice of that appeal on Monday with the state court. The state stopped Broom's execution...

A report into the botched execution of Clayton Lockett has revealed new grisly details of the moments leading up to his agonizing death. According to the document, a doctor tried to insert an intravenous line into his groin in a frantic attempt to save him, but hit and burst an artery instead. It caused blood to splatter over the doctor's jacket before the execution was officially stopped. Lockett's heart stopped beating moments later. In the report, Oklahoma state prison warden Anita Trammell is quoted as saying that the procedure was a 'bloody mess'.

An execution taking place in Arizona tonight appears to have gone horribly awry. According to a report from the Associated Press, inmate Joseph Rudolph Wood "gasped and snorted" and was still alive more than an hour after the execution began. Wood was not pronounced dead until 3:49PM MT, one hour and 57 minutes after the beginning of the procedure. Wood's lawyers filed an emergency appeal during the execution, noting that he was "gasping and snorting for more than an hour" but was still alive some 70 minutes after the execution began. The whole process should have taken 10 minutes, Wood's...

Sixteen minutes into last week's botched lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, the warden closed the blinds on the windows to the execution chamber and turned off the sound so that witnesses could not see Clayton Lockett writhe or hear him moan. The procedure, designed to resemble a medical treatment -- albeit one with an involuntary patient and a very low probability of recovery -- had begun to look uncomfortably like the cold-blooded killing of a helpless person. Since Lockett himself was guilty of such a killing, having been convicted of shooting a 19-year-old woman during a burglary and...

An Oklahoma inmate whose execution was halted tonight because the delivery of a new drug combination was botched died of a heart attack, the head of the state Department of Corrections said. The execution began at 6:23pm when officials began administering the first drug, and a doctor declared Clayton Lockett to be unconscious at 6:33pm. About three minutes later, though, Lockett began breathing heavily, writhing on the gurney, clenching his teeth, and straining to lift his head off the pillow. After about three minutes, a doctor lifted the sheet that was covering Lockett to examine the injection site "and the...

An Oklahoma inmate whose execution was halted Tuesday because the delivery of a new drug combination was botched died of a heart attack, the head of the state Department of Corrections said. Director Robert Patton said inmate Clayton Lockett died Tuesday after all three drugs were administered. Patton halted Lockett's execution about 20 minutes after the first drug was administered. He said there had been vein failure. The execution began at 6:23 p.m. when officials began administering the first drug, and a doctor declared Lockett to be unconscious at 6:33 p.m. About three minutes later, though, Lockett began breathing heavily,...

TAMPA — A Florida inmate wasn't properly sedated and could have felt like he was suffocating in a botched execution last year, a medical expert told the state's lethal injection commission Monday. Witness descriptions of Angel Diaz gasping for air indicate the inmate felt the effect of a paralyzing chemical used in Florida's three-drug cocktail, said Columbia University anesthesiologist Dr. Mark Heath. "That is a classic sign — that fish out of water look — of a person who is partially paralyzed who is struggling to gasp for breath," he said. Diaz's Dec. 13 execution took about 20 minutes longer...