Botched Lethal Injection Takes Nearly Two Hours to Kill Arizona Inmate

A via The Verge ^ | July 23, 2014 | Nathan Ingraham

[lbryce]

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 lawyers said.

[Arrowhead1952]

He’s dead. It wasn’t botched. If he lived, it would have been botched.

[taxcontrol]

In my opinion, yes. First it is all natural. The atmosphere is already 70% Nitrogen so no environmental concerns. Second, no carbon dioxide builds up in the blood stream so the person does not have the sensation of choking or suffocation. Third, by removing the oxygen (99% nitrogen gas), the condemned just passes out. It happens so quickly that may people have died in industrial accidents due to Nitrogen Asphyxiation and due to their body positions, we know that they did not feel any threat or danger. Fourth, it’s cheap. It is used as an industrial welding shield gas and there are machines that remove oxygen from the air as well.

So:
No bloody mess from bullets or beheading
No pain so no lawyer complaints
Not toxic
Easily obtained and administered.

Procedure to administer would be to strap the condemned down, place on a breathing mask, put on a brain wave detector, flow 1.1 atmospheres of 99% nitrogen, wait for the brain waves to go flat.