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“He has been gasping, snorting, and unable to breathe and not dying,” lawyer Robin C. Konrad told the judge over the phone, according to a transcript. “And we’re asking — our motion asks for you to issue an emergency stay and order the Department of Corrections to start lifesaving techniques.”

The judge asked his law clerk to quickly locate a phone number for an attorney for the state so he could find out what was happening. They conferenced in Jeffrey A. Zick, who was getting updates from the scene from Arizona’s corrections chief.

In the middle of the arguments, Zick informed them that Wood had died.

Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan read a statement Thursday outside his office in which he dismissed the notion that the execution was botched, calling it an “erroneous conclusion” and “pure conjecture.” He did not take questions from reporters.

He said IV lines in the inmate’s arms were “perfectly placed” and insisted that Wood felt no pain. He also said the Arizona attorney general’s office will not seek any new death warrants while his office completes a review of execution practices ordered by Gov. Jan Brewer.

Wood’s lawyer Dale Baich called it a “horrifically botched execution” that should have taken 10 minutes.

Wood gasped more than 600 times over an hour and a half. During the gasps, his jaw dropped and his chest expanded and contracted.

An Ohio inmate gasped in similar fashion for nearly 30 minutes in January. An Oklahoma inmate died of a heart attack in April, minutes after prison officials halted his execution because the drugs weren’t being administered properly.