An appeals court postponed an Arizona prisoner's execution Saturday after his attorney argued that the state needs to provide details of the lethal injection cocktail drugs.
Joseph Rudolph Wood, 55, was spared the death penalty just days before his sentence was to be carried out.
Wood's attorney, Dale Baich, argued that increased transparency is needed after the botched execution of an Oklahoma prisoner in April.
Instead of being rendered unconscious, Clayton Lockett began convulsing after the first drug, midazolam, was injected. It was the first time that Oklahoma had used the drug in its lethal injection cocktail.
While he was writhing on the gurney, Lockett raised his head and said, "Man," "I'm not," and "something's wrong," according to a KFOR-TV eyewitness reporter. Lockett's attorney, Dean Sanderford, told reporters that the movements started as a "twitch," and then "the convulsing got worse. It looked like his whole upper body was trying to lift off the gurney. For a minute, there was chaos."
Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton told reporters that Lockett's vein exploded after the midazolam was injected. The inmate was given the rest of the lethal injection cocktail, and died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the first injection.
States across the country have had to change their cocktails after several European drug manufacturers banned American prisons from using their products in executions. The other two drugs in the Oklahoma lethal injection sequence are vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride.
The Arizona appeals court found that the state must name who manufactured the midazolam and hydromorphone used in their two-drug lethal injection cocktail, and how they developed their execution method. Baich celebrated the decision.
"Today the Court has made a well-reasoned ruling affirming the core First Amendment principles regarding the public's right to know, which aid all parts of our democratic government," he said in a statement.
Midazolam and hydromorphone were the same drugs used in a botched execution in Ohio six months ago, when Dennis McGuire seized and choked for 26 minutes before dying.
State attorneys argued that Wood has no First Amendment right to the detailed lethal injection information.
The inmate was scheduled to be executed July 23 for the killings of his estranged girlfriend, Debra Dietz, and her father, Eugene Dietz. Wood shot them to death in Tucson in August 1989.
