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AZ Inmate Given 15 x Recommended Drug Dosages

By Jeralyn, Section Death Penalty
Posted on Sat Aug 02, 2014 at 08:20:00 AM EST
Tags: lethal injection, death penalty (all tags)
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Records released in Arizona's botched 2 hour execution show inmate Joseph Wood was injected with 15 times the amount of lethal injection drugs called for by Arizona's death protocol.

“The Arizona execution protocol explicitly states that a prisoner will be executed using 50 milligrams of hydromorphone and 50 milligrams of midazolam,” Dale A. Baich, one of the lawyers who represented Mr. Wood, said in a statement.

...Mr. Wood was injected with 750 milligrams of hydromorphone and 750 milligrams of midazolam in all.

It was expected that Wood would be dead in 10 minutes. It took almost 2 hours. [More...]

While an outside investigator is being sought to conduct the inquiry into what went wrong, Charles Ryan, the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections is still defending the execution:

Mr. Ryan justified the use of repeated doses of the drugs by citing a state law authorizing “an intravenous injection of substance or substances in lethal quantity sufficient to cause death.”

The released records show Ryan personally supervised the execution and gave the order for additional dosages to be administered.

According to Joel Zivot, an assistant professor of anesthesiology and surgery at Emory University Hospital, Arizona is just winging it, making it up as it goes along. Also,

[M]idazolam acts “like a key in a lock,” attaching to a receptor in the body and causing sedation. Once the receptor is saturated, he said, “it doesn’t matter if you give the person 500 additional doses or five million doses. It won’t have any more effect.”

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    AZ Inmate Given 15 x Recommended Drug Dosages | 13 comments (13 topical)

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    What I "love" most about this argument (5.00 / 3) (#2)
    by Dadler on Sat Aug 02, 2014 at 08:18:58 AM EST
    Nobody ever seems to consider what it does to the LIVING to carry these wretched acts out. The judge in AZ last week, I think it was, who said the guillotine or hanging would seem to be the most "humane" ways to kill the convicted, and yet even this halfwit couldn't make the connection between state sanctioned murder and those who must carry it out. Do YOU want to be the person picking up that severed head, or taking down that hung body with its "hangman's fracture" of the neck? Of course we wouldn't. But we can't get past our need for vengeance. Not that I don't understand the desire for revenge when our loved ones are butchered, just that, you know, I don't think revenge should be the focus of the judicial system.

    I don't (none / 0) (#3)
    by lentinel on Sat Aug 02, 2014 at 08:45:38 AM EST
    know what the focus is for the State when it indulges its lust for putting people to death.

    Sometimes they seem gleeful.
    Sometimes hellbent on getting it done - before any possible stay could interrupt their beam.

    In terms of efficacy, it seems to me that the guillotine is much more humane. No two hours of agony or even 10 minutes. (As far a I know anyway - not having had access to the potential thoughts in the brain of a severed head...)

    But - ick. So grizzly. A severed head. As you said, who's gonna want to pick it up... actually I believe it went into a bucket or basket in the good old days. Maybe they could have it just go down some chute into an incinerator. I'm sure someone could come up with a clean sanitized guillotine. But, ick none the less.

    I suppose the image of a sedative being administered, the convict "going to sleep" - (albeit a long one) is what is supposed to be the attraction of the lethal cocktail. But it's not working out that way.

    Of course they could just drop the doomed felon from a plane over the ocean. Or a retired hit man could be engaged to give a badabing or two - and it's over.

    What I think is driving the State in its insane search for a "humane" killing method is its love of ritual. The priest leading the condemned slowly to the chair. The last meal. The whole  mishegas.

    Just opening a trap door into a vat of acid wouldn't quite do it.

    Parent

    Only socipaths would sign up... (5.00 / 1) (#6)
    by Dadler on Sat Aug 02, 2014 at 08:58:30 AM EST
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