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July 24, 2014

Botched Lethal Injection Kills Arizona Prisoner After 2 Hours 
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The U.S. death penalty system is under new scrutiny today after yet
another botched execution. On Wednesday, Arizona took just under two
hours to kill Jospeh Wood, sentenced to death for a double murder. Wood
gasped for air, choked and snorted after he was injected with a two-drug
combination that was relatively untested and had been used only once
before, a 26-minute execution in Ohio earlier this year. Wood was killed
after the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that put the
execution on hold. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had sided
with Wood's request that Arizona disclose its lethal injection methods
and the source of the drugs involved. Wood's execution was the fifth
since the botched killing of Oklahoma prisoner Clayton Lockett in April.
In a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union said: "In its rush to
put Mr. Wood to death in secret, Arizona ignored the dire and clear
warnings from the botched executions of Oklahoma and Ohio. It's time for
Arizona and the other states still using lethal injection to admit that
this experiment with unreliable drugs is a failure."

 

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