The Botched Execution Of Joseph Wood
Wikimedia CommonsJoseph Wood’s execution lasted nearly two hours.
Convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend Debbie Dietz and her father Eugene in 1989, Joseph Wood was sentenced to death. It would be nearly 25 years before he was led to Arizona’s execution chamber on July 23, 2014.
Wood’s death was supposed to be a “humane” lethal injection that would kill him within 10 minutes. But that was far from what actually happened.
About seven minutes in, Wood’s lips started moving. Then, he suddenly moved upward against the straps, stunning the witnesses. Dale Baich, one of Wood’s attorneys, described the scene as such: “He continued to gasp, gulp, and struggle to breathe, and that went on for an hour and 40 minutes.”
Baich continued, “An emergency motion was filed with the federal district court and a telephonic hearing was held. During that hearing, Mr. Wood passed away.”
It was later revealed that Wood had been injected 15 times with execution drugs, violating Arizona protocol. Furthermore, the combination of drugs in question had been an experimental and controversial mix.
Though prison officials later insisted that Wood was “comatose and never in pain” during the execution, many people doubt that version of the story — especially since some witnesses who were present said that they saw him gasping and gulping at least 600 times before he finally died.
One medical expert on anesthesia named David Waisel said that “twice the dosage is not necessarily twice the effect” — and that it was impossible to “know for sure” that Wood didn’t suffer any pain in his final moments.
After learning about nine horrifically botched executions from history, read about 16 of the most unusual deaths from history. Then, take a look at some of the worst execution methods ever devised.
