The process began at 1:52 p.m. local time. After five minutes, officials reported Wood was sedated. At 2:02 p.m. the he began breathing. A minute later, his mouth moved.
Wood’s lawyers filed an emergency court appeal Wednesday after the lethal injection did not immediately take effect, leaving him “gasping and snoring for more than an hour.”
“We respectfully request that this court stop the execution and require that the Department of Corrections use the lifesaving provisions required in its protocol,” the lawyers said in the US District Court filing. “He is still alive. This execution has violated Mr Wood’s eighth amendment right to be executed in the absence of cruel and unusual punishment.”
The court declined to step in, and the contingency plan was not enacted.
Wood’s protracted death called to mind the botched executions of Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire in January and of Oklahoma inmate Clayton D. Lockett in April.
McGuire’s death has been described as one of the longest executions in the history of Ohio, at 25 minutes. During that time, the Columbus Dispatch reported that McGuire was “struggling and gasping loudly for air, making snorting and choking sounds that lasted for at least 10 minutes, with his chest heaving and his fist clenched. Deep, rattling sounds emanated from his mouth.”
In Lockett’s case, prison officials eventually canceled the execution after 14 minutes because he was still moving and looked up to say, “Something’s wrong.” He died of a heart attack nearly 45 minutes after his execution went wrong. During the procedure, officials administered more drugs than necessary and burst a vein.
Earlier on Wednesday, the US Supreme Court upheld Arizona’s secrecy surrounding its lethal injection drugs, lifting the stay of execution for Wood issued by the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals. In its decision, the high court did not address his lawyer’s argument that the double murderer had a First Amendment right to know the source of the drugs that would be used to execute him.
Wood, 55, was sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend and her father in 1989.