PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona’s first execution in nearly eight years went smoother than the state’s last use of the death penalty, when a convicted prisoner who was given 15 doses of a combination of two drugs gasped hundreds of times. for almost two hours.
The lethal injection death of Clarence Dixon Wednesday at Florence State Prison for his murder conviction in the 1978 murder of 21-year-old Arizona State University student Deana Bowdoin appeared to follow execution protocol. State: After injecting the drug, Dixon’s mouth remained open and his body did not move. He was pronounced dead about 10 minutes later.
But death penalty experts said Thursday the estimated 25 minutes it took medical staff to insert an IV into Dixon’s body was too long. The workers first tried unsuccessfully to insert an IV into his left arm before they could connect it to his right arm. They then elected to make an incision, known as a ‘cut’, in the groin area for another intravenous line.
Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School who has studied executions for more than 25 years, said executions are expected to take seven to 10 minutes from the start of the intravenous insertion process to when the prisoner is pronounced dead.
“It’s a sign of desperation (on the part of the execution team), and it’s a sign of an unskilled executioner,” Denno said.
Before Dixon was put to death, the last execution in Arizona took place in July 2014, when Joseph Wood received 15 doses of a combination of two drugs over nearly two hours. Wood sniffled several times and gasped before dying. The process dragged on so long that the Arizona Supreme Court convened an emergency hearing during the execution to decide whether to stop the proceedings.
Arizona has since changed its execution protocols, agreeing to no longer use one of the drugs – midazolam – that was injected into Wood. Instead, Dixon was executed with a pentobarbital injection.
The problems surrounding Wood’s death, combined with the state’s difficulty in finding sources to sell him lethal injection drugs, led to a nearly eight-year hiatus in executions in Arizona.
Similar problems have happened before with medical workers trying to insert IV lines into convicted prisoners.
Alabama prison officials attempted to execute a prisoner by lethal injection in February 2017, but had to stop because medical personnel could not find a suitable vein to connect the IV line to. The prisoner died of cancer nearly four years later.
A November 2017 execution was called off in Ohio after members of the execution team told the director of state prisons they could find no luck. The prisoner died of natural causes a few months later.
And another execution by lethal injection in Ohio was canceled in September 2009 after two hours when technicians could not find a suitable vein for a condemned prisoner, who had cried in pain while receiving 18 needle sticks. He died in prison at the end of 2020 of possible complications from COVID-19.
Death penalty experts say the difficulty in finding intravenous lines could be attributed to a combination of convicted prisoners’ physical conditions – such as previous use of intravenous drugs, medical issues related to hydration or the effects of aging – and untrained people trying to insert IV lines. It is not known if Dixon, 66, has ever used intravenous drugs.
Michael Radelet, a sociologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder who has studied the death penalty for 40 years, said the lingering element of Dixon’s death leads him to believe the execution was botched.
“I would classify it as a sloppy, acknowledging that not everyone would agree with that. But things didn’t go well,” Radelet said.
In a statement released Thursday, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Rehabilitation said Dixon’s execution was carried out “perfectly” and that she followed execution laws and protocols. of State.
Rick Romley, who headed the county attorney’s office in metro Phoenix who filed the murder charge against Dixon but left office before he was sentenced to death in January 2008, said the execution had may have been more complicated than expected, but he didn’t consider it. defective. He said difficulty finding veins to insert IV lines is common for people inside and outside prison.
“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Romley said.
Asked whether difficulties inserting IVs during executions violate protections against cruel and unusual punishment, Denno said there has been a history of botched executions in the United States since the advent of lethal injections.
“It (Dixon’s execution) may be sloppy, but it won’t affect anyone’s Eighth Amendment rights” against cruel and unusual punishment, Denno said. “The courts have not been kind to circumstances like this.”
Amanda Bass, one of Dixon’s attorneys, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
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