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| Arizona Agrees to Stop Using Drug Tied to Botched Executions |
| By governing.com |
| Published: 12/21/2016 |
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Officials in Arizona agreed to stop using a controversial lethal-injection drug that has been at the center of botched or prolonged executions in several states, including a 2014 execution in Arizona that took nearly two hours and that experts called one of the longest executions ever conducted in the United States. The decision by the Arizona Department of Corrections to abandon the drug, a sedative known as midazolam, came in a settlement agreement as part of a lawsuit over the state’s execution drugs and procedures. The agreement, filed in federal court on Monday, settles only a portion of the case, which was brought against the state by seven death-row inmates. Midazolam was one of two drugs given to Joseph R. Wood III in July 2014 in Arizona’s death chamber in Florence. Mr. Wood, convicted in the murders of his girlfriend and her father in 1989, was injected with 15 times the standard dose of midazolam and a painkiller during a procedure that lasted one hour 57 minutes. Some witnesses described Mr. Wood gasping more than 600 times. The unusual length of a procedure that typically takes about 15 minutes prompted the Arizona attorney general to temporarily halt executions in the state. The hiatus remains in effect under a court order. Read More. |
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