Michael Kiefer

The Republic | azcentral.com

The Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday set a July 23 execution date for a death-row prisoner despite national controversy over one of the drugs that will be used to carry out the execution.

Joseph Wood murdered his girlfriend and her father in Tucson in 1989. The Arizona Department of Corrections intends to kill him with a cocktail of midazolam, a Valium-like drug, and hydromorphone, an opium derivative.

Two states where the drug midazolam was used in executions that appeared to cause suffering to condemned men are under court order to put off executions until investigations are conducted.

A similar combination of midazolam and hydromorphone proved inefficient in an Ohio execution in January. That prisoner gasped for air and took 20 minutes to die. Although Ohio decided to increase the dosage of the death drugs, on Monday, a U.S. District Court judge in Southern Ohio ordered that all executions in that state be stayed until Aug. 15 or further court order while the execution protocol is studied.

Midazolam was also used in April as the first of a three-drug sequence in Oklahoma. The condemned man appeared to be unconscious, but then writhed as if in pain, tried to sit up and apparently died of a heart attack more than 40 minutes after the injection began. Most executions by lethal injection take about 10 minutes. On May 8, an Oklahoma state court of appeals ordered that executions there be stayed until November as investigations continue.

Wood, 55, was sentenced to death twice for the murders of Debra and Eugene Dietz at the Tucson auto body shop where they worked. Wood had a "tumultuous" relationship with Debra Dietz, and when she moved out of their apartment, he stalked her. Then on Aug. 7, 1989, he drove to her father's auto body shop and shot them both to death before being wounded in a shoot-out with police.

In April, the Arizona Attorney General's Office filed a motion for a warrant of execution on Wood; on the same day, the office sent a letter to Wood's attorney saying that the Department of Corrections intended to carry out the execution by injection of midazolam and hydromorphone.

In the past, Arizona used the barbiturates thiopental and pentobarbital, alone and in combination with other drugs, but they became unavailable because pharmaceutical companies were no longer willing to allow their products, which have legitimate medical applications, to be used to kill people.