Arizona to change its execution drugs after investigation of inmate's lengthy July death

Joseph Wood

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Arizona officials said Monday they have been cleared of any wrongdoing in an execution this year that lasted nearly two hours, but they are nevertheless changing the drugs they use to put inmates to death.

According to a letter from Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan to Gov. Jan Brewer, the agency no longer will use the drug combination used in the controversial July execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood. He was given 15 doses of the drugs and gasped over and over before taking his final breath.

The letter said the department will stop using the mixture of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a painkiller. Instead, it will try to obtain pentobarbital or Sodium Pentothal, the powerful sedative also known as sodium thiopental that was used in lethal injections in Arizona until it became difficult to obtain.

Pentobarbital has been successfully used dozens of times in Texas, Georgia and Missouri but also is in short supply. Records obtained by The Associated Press show Texas has enough pentobarbital to carry out the first five lethal injections scheduled there in 2015.

If Arizona cannot acquire those drugs, it will use a three-drug combination that can include midazolam and potassium chloride, among others. That three-drug mix has been used successfully in eight executions in Florida, according to the report.

The July 23 execution of Wood, convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend and her father, Debbie and Gene Dietz, called into question the efficacy of the drugs used in Arizona after it took nearly two hours for Wood to die.

Wood's attorney, Dale Baich, says the execution was botched.

But results from an independent investigation conducted by a group of former corrections directors and experts found no protocols were broken and the state properly trained its execution team. The findings released Monday also show Wood was injected correctly but did not react to the drugs as expected.

The three-member team recommended the changes to the drugs used.

"The report is clear that the execution of inmate Wood was handled in accordance with all department procedures, which, as the report states, either meet or exceed national standards," Ryan said in a statement. "It was done appropriately and with the utmost professionalism."

But Baich was unsatisfied, saying the report failed to explain why the experimental drug protocol did not work as promised.

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Source: US News, December 22, 2014

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