Death Row prisoner takes two hours to die in botched execution

In yet another botched execution in the US, a death row prisoner “gasped and snorted” for more than nearly two hours before dying.

16:49 24 July 2014

55-year-old Joseph Rudolph Wood, a convicted Arizona killer, “gasped and snorted” for about two hours after the lethal injection process started, effectively extending his execution 12 times longer than the normal time.

During his execution, his lawyer, who said that the process should only take 10 minutes, filed an emergency appeal in federal court demanding that it be stopped for the reason that he was still alive.

Meanwhile, a witness saw the prisoner gasped for air in “five to twelve second intervals for almost two hours.”

Wood was put on death row for killing his 29-year-old estranged girlfriend, Debra Dietz and her father, Eugene Dietz in 1989.

Meanwhile, relatives of Wood’s victims said they were fine by the way the execution was carried out. "He conducted a horrifying murder, and you worry about the drug and how it affects him," said Richard Brown, Ms Dietz's the brother-in-law.

"Why didn't they give him a bullet? Why didn't we give him Drano?" he added, referring to a brand of drain cleaner.

Meanwhile, civil rights group American Civil said in a statement: "It's time for Arizona and the other states still using lethal injection to admit that this experiment with unreliable drugs is a failure.”