Posted on 07/24/2014 8:40:54 AM PDT by Impala64ssa
"He has been gasping for more than an hour," lawyers said in an emergency appeal to halt the botched execution of Arizona inmate Joseph Rudolph Wood yesterday. "He is still alive." As the hour mark passed, Wood's lawyers filed an appeal to a district court and even called Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the New York Times reports. Kennedy declined to halt the execution, while the district court didn't respond until after Wood had died, almost two hours into a process that usually takes around 10 minutes. Gov. Jan Brewer has ordered an investigation into the execution of the 55-year-old who murdered his estranged girlfriend and her father in 1989.
State officials say Wood was comatose and didn't suffer during the execution. "He was snoring," says a spokeswoman for the Arizona attorney general. "There was zero gasping or snorting, and that's just the truth. He was asleep." Members of the press who witnessed the execution, however, say they heard a lot of gasping: "He gulped like a fish on land," writes Michael Kiefer at the Arizona Republic. "The movement was like a piston: The mouth opened, the chest rose, the stomach convulsed. And when the doctor came in to check on his consciousness and turned on the microphone to announce that Wood was still sedated, we could hear the sound he was making: a snoring, sucking, similar to when a swimming-pool filter starts taking in air."
(Excerpt) Read more at newser.com ...
I was thinking the same thing. They seem to care more about the thugs than the victims.
The governments solution, of course, will be to throw more money at it when just a 50¢ cent cartridge would solve the problem saving time, money, pain and embarrassment.
One of the few things the French did right... guillotine!
I love westerns. In one, it said people came from 100 miles to see a hanging. There was not much to see/do in the Old West. William W. Johnstone was one of the best western writers.
He has been gasping for more than an hour,” lawyers said in an emergency appeal
No one had a pistol handy?
I can assure you he would not have been gasping for a hour...
Be sure to bill the family of the convicted criminal all legal, investigation, incarceration, and execution bills starting at the date of the crime. Then destroy the family's home. THAT might send a message to future criminals that they MIGHT get caught, and if they do, their entire family suffers horribly.
My thoughts also. If it was botched, he would not be dead. A bit of suffering for a feral human who did what that guy did is a feature, not a bug.
When we were doing them regularly, it had the additional advantage of creating a public spectacle and a venue for singing hymns.
I can't think of a better way to really, really p*ss off the ACLU.
That’s the way I want to go out. Sedated and sleeping peacefully, like my grandfather did.
Not screaming in terror like his passengers.
You could always do away with the new drugs and inject FRACING Water. (normally used for fracing wells) They say that’s pretty deadly, and its bound get some liberals completely wound up!
TFB
One question: Did he care if his victims suffered?
Didn’t think so and as far as I’m concerned, the legal system should show the same amount of concern to him.
He’s dead Jim...
Put them in a gas chamber and replace the air with nitrogen. The speed of the replacement can be commensurate with the crime.
“At 8:50 a.m., a Tucson Police officer saw Defendant driving in a suspicious manner near the shop. The officer slowed her patrol car and made eye contact with Defendant as he left his truck and entered the shop. Eugene was on the telephone in an area where three other employees were working. Defendant waited for Eugene to hang up, drew a revolver, and approached to within four feet of him. The other employees shouted for Defendant to put the gun away. Without saying a word, Defendant fatally shot Eugene once in the chest and then smiled. When the police officer saw this from her patrol car she immediately called for more officers. Defendant left the shop, but quickly returned and again pointed his revolver at the now supine Eugene. Donald Dietz, an employee and Eugene’s seventy-year-old brother, struggled with Defendant, who then ran to the area where Debra had been working.
Debra had apparently heard an employee shout that her father had been shot and was trying to telephone for help when Defendant grabbed her around the neck from behind and placed his revolver directly against her chest. Debra struggled and screamed, “No, Joe, don’t!” Another employee heard Defendant say, “I told you I was going to do it, I have to kill you.” Defendant then called Debra a “bitch” and shot her twice in the chest...
...Although he did not testify, Defendant did not dispute his role in the killings but argued he had acted impulsively and without premeditation...
...This court has “long held that where the existence of premeditation is in issue, evidence of previous quarrels or difficulties between the accused and the victim is admissible.” Jeffers, 135 Ariz. at 418, 661 P.2d at 1119 (citing Leonard v. State, 17 Ariz. 293, 151 P. 947 (1915)). Such evidence “tends to show the malice, motive or premeditation of the accused.” Id. at 418, 661 P.2d at 1119 (emphasis added). In some cases, of course, such evidence may also show lack of premeditation. In either event, it is relevant. Defendant’s abuse of Debra falls squarely within this rule and, under the facts of this case, tends to show both motive and premeditation...”
http://leagle.com/decision/1994233180Ariz53_1222.xml/STATE%20v.%20WOOD
Technically because of the way our legal system is set up no innocent person has ever been executed.
If we accept the premise that if a jury rules “not guilty” regardless of the facts (and we later learn that person was in fact guilty) in the eyes of the law, they are innocent.
The reverse is also true. We have safeguards and appeals. By the time the death penalty is applied the condemned has had multiple reviews of their case.
Even if after all that, we discover that the person was in fact did not commit the crime, they are still “guilty” having been found so by a jury of their peers.
While the death penalty is not 100% free from mistakes, there is one thing we all can agree on, no one that has been executed has ever killed an innocent person again. That can not be said for the many once convicted death row inmates that somehow found themselves out among the people again.
How many innocent victims must there be to satisfy those that oppose the death penalty?
One last item. Life is unfair. People die everyday from things other than old age. Accidents, war, murders, diseases, why is it the only thing that concerns the left is the death penalty.
I am sure the victims of these convicted killers wished they had years of appeals before they died.
At least that is my opinion
Isn’t there a machine which kills beef cattle quickly and efficiently?
Why not use some variation of that?
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