The Painful Lethal Injection Of Ángel Nieves Díaz
Wikimedia CommonsÁngel Nieves Díaz suffered for more than half an hour before dying.
Born in Puerto Rico on August 31, 1951, Ángel Nieves Díaz fell into a life of drugs and crime at a very early age. And in 1986, he was found guilty of murdering the manager of a Miami strip club, but he maintained his innocence all throughout his trial and long afterward.
With Díaz having represented himself in court as a non-native speaker of English, and a key informant later saying that he lied about a supposed confession from Díaz, the governor of Puerto Rico asked Florida Governor Jeb Bush for clemency. But the request was ultimately denied.
When he was sent to the execution room of Florida State Prison in 2006, Díaz gave a harrowing final statement before the lethal injection began: “The state of Florida is killing an innocent person. The state of Florida is committing a crime, because I am innocent. The death penalty is not only a form of vengeance, but also a cowardly act by humans.”
Wikimedia CommonsÁngel Nieves Díaz claimed to be innocent until his last breath.
After spending 20 years on death row, the 55-year-old was strapped down on a gurney and prepared for what was supposed to be a standard lethal injection. But his botched execution was anything but standard.
Not only did it take over a half-hour for Díaz to die — which is three times longer than typical — but he also had to be injected with a second dose of deadly chemicals before the agonizing process was over. Ten minutes into the execution, he even managed to ask, “What is going on?”
In his final moments, Díaz grimaced in pain and appeared to struggle to breathe. Afterward, it was later revealed that the needles meant to inject drugs into his veins had been pushed through the vessels into some nearby soft tissue. And dark chemical burns had been left on both arms.
The execution was so botched that it led Governor Bush to temporarily halt all lethal injections until the investigation was over and the protocol could be reviewed. The results were nothing less than haunting, and one expert candidly said, “It really sounds like he was tortured to death.”
