Lawyers for Joseph Wood, a death row inmate in Arizona, claim that the state botched his execution on Wednesday afternoon, painfully dragging out his death for about two hours. Wood was "gasping and snorting for more than an hour," said the lawyers, who tried to stay his execution once it became apparent that things were going awry.
The bungled execution follows a similar incident in April, when Oklahoma used an untested lethal injection cocktail on inmate Clayton Lockett, essentially causing his heart to explode, according to Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic. Wood had reportedly received a little-used cocktail:
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