Posted on 07/24/2014 8:40:54 AM PDT by Impala64ssa
"He has been gasping for more than an hour," lawyers said in an emergency appeal to halt the botched execution of Arizona inmate Joseph Rudolph Wood yesterday. "He is still alive." As the hour mark passed, Wood's lawyers filed an appeal to a district court and even called Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the New York Times reports. Kennedy declined to halt the execution, while the district court didn't respond until after Wood had died, almost two hours into a process that usually takes around 10 minutes. Gov. Jan Brewer has ordered an investigation into the execution of the 55-year-old who murdered his estranged girlfriend and her father in 1989.
State officials say Wood was comatose and didn't suffer during the execution. "He was snoring," says a spokeswoman for the Arizona attorney general. "There was zero gasping or snorting, and that's just the truth. He was asleep." Members of the press who witnessed the execution, however, say they heard a lot of gasping: "He gulped like a fish on land," writes Michael Kiefer at the Arizona Republic. "The movement was like a piston: The mouth opened, the chest rose, the stomach convulsed. And when the doctor came in to check on his consciousness and turned on the microphone to announce that Wood was still sedated, we could hear the sound he was making: a snoring, sucking, similar to when a swimming-pool filter starts taking in air."
(Excerpt) Read more at newser.com ...
Bring back public hangings.
Ok, let’s just make a law that says you can’t kill anyone, assault anyone, or harm anyone....and that will prevent episodes like this.
/sarcasm off
Even a badly botched hanging will only take 30 minutes or so . . . or produce a gory decapitation.
Botched? You mean the guy lived?
Why do they have such a hard time? I used to work at a vets and we put hundreds of dogs to sleep with nary a problem ever.
Hanging was cheaper and greener.
I really dont understand this. When i had surgery they made me count back from 99... i think i got to 95, then BAM! I was gone... how the hell can it take so long?? They should have something like that, just boom gone!
Some drugs have been discontinued due to the policies of companies that produce them. Different combinations have been introduced with varying results.
seems like a firing squad would get the job done without any such issues.
Same people don’t have a word to say about a live birth abortion where the doctor throws the newborn baby into a trash can to suffer his entire earthly life. I hate libs.
The description of the crime (double murder) is towards the end.
So we have lots of public witnesses when years later we found out we hung the wrong guy?
Gosh I feel sorry for murderers.
An actual citizen witness - and not a media activist - reported that he was snoring, not choking.
She said he looked really peaceful.
Bon voyage, man! (waves)
Execution day is Friday. You get picked for the morning shift, or the afternoon shift (4 hours each).
Televised on channel 11.
You're issued a rifle and a box of bullets when your shift starts.
A recitation of the perp's crimes, in full technicolor. Then bang!
Five minutes to cart off the old one, and strap in the new one, and do it all again.
Relatives of rape/murder/child abuse victims get special priority, if they show up and request it, they get to replace one of the executioners.
If there's not enough work for 4 hours, you go home early.
I’m still partial to the electric chair. The whole bit of a killer walking that last mile, with the horrified anticipation of his brain being sizzled by high voltage, has a certain sublime satisfaction for me that lethal injections have never come close to.
Every execution should be like this - painful and take two hours.
These “botched” executions make me wonder if the executioner is botching it on purpose. Veterinarians are able to put down dogs with no problem, so perhaps they should be hired to do the executions.
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