From the Rose Law Group Growlery
By Phil Riske, managing editor
The last execution of an Arizona inmate was botched, and carrying out death penalties has been on hold after the lengthy death of Joseph Rudolph Wood in July 2014.
It took our Department of Corrections (DOC) an hour and a half to kill Woods. It was revealed he was given 15 doses of midazolam and a painkiller. One dose should have done it.
Now we learn thanks to The Associated Press Arizona tried to illegally import an unapproved lethal injection drug, but federal agents seized it at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport.
You’d think department officials would be hiding their faces in embarrassment. Rather, the state, which paid around $27,000 for sodium thiopental, an anesthetic no longer manufactured by FDA-approved companies is protesting the capture of its shipment from a foreign source.
“The department is contesting FDA’s legal authority to continue to withhold the state’s execution chemicals,” state Department of Corrections spokesman Andrew Wilder told AP, which is party to a lawsuit against DOC over transparency of executions in Arizona.
An attorney involved in the case told AP, “Once again, the Arizona Department of Corrections is trying to skirt the law in order to get execution drugs. Nobody is above the law, and that includes the Arizona Department of Corrections.”
Even if you support capital punishment, don’t you think we’re overdue in finding flawless ways to carry it out?
Post Script: The Arizona Supreme Court is going to consider on Oct. 27 a case in which a Phoenix man accused of murder is challenging the state’s death penalty laws as too broad, Arizona Capitol Times reported late Friday.
