Michael Kiefer

The Republic | azcentral.com

Executions are on hold in Arizona because of questions about Wood execution

Ruling made in response to suit by Arizona Republic and other media outlets

Judge G. Murray Snow does not decide on media request to provide more information about executioners, drugs

A U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix ruled Wednesday that journalists and other witnesses will be able to see all aspects of executions by lethal injection carried out in Arizona.

State law requires that executions be witnessed by several groups of people, including officials, family members and five journalists.

But until recently, the witnesses only viewed the insertion of the catheters that carry the death drugs into the prisoner over closed-circuit television.

They watched through a window as the condemned man said his last words and then died.

In response to a lawsuit by The Arizona Republic and other media outlets, Judge G. Murray Snow ordered that witnesses must now be allowed to see the condemned person enter the execution chamber and get strapped to the gurney.

They will also be able to watch as the drugs are being administered from another room.

During the state's last execution, prison executioners shot 15 doses of drugs into prisoner Joseph Wood, when one was supposed to be fatal.

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Wood took nearly two hours to die because the drugs did not work as they were supposed to. He snorted and gasped on the execution table as witnesses watched, unaware that he was receiving multiple doses.

The catheters that carry the drugs to the prisoner stretch into a separate room, out of view of the witnesses, where the execution team operates unseen.

Although executioners' identities are protected by state statute, Snow said in a hearing in October that it would be possible to show the drugs being "pushed" on closed-circuit TV without revealing the identities of the people administering them.

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Snow also took issue with a provision in the state's execution protocol giving Arizona Corrections Director Charles Ryan the discretion to close the curtain on the window into the execution chamber if things went bad. That has not happened in any Arizona executions, though it did occur during a botched 2014 execution in Oklahoma.

Snow permanently enjoined the corrections director from closing the curtain.

However, Snow did not grant judgment for either side in the media coalition's requests to provide more information about the personnel administering the drugs, the quality of the drugs used or their sources.

Attorneys for the state argue that such information is protected by a confidentiality statute. Snow wrote that the media plaintiffs had not provided sufficient evidence for him to make a decision, meaning that those portions of the lawsuit will go forward.

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Executions have been on hold in Arizona by order of a federal judge in another case because of questions surrounding the Wood execution in July 2014.

The Corrections Department reached a settlement Monday in that case regarding one of the drugs used in Wood's execution. Arizona has agreed to discontinue use of the drug midazolam, which it can no longer obtain from suppliers or any other drugs in the benzodiazepam (valium) family.

But the state also has not been able to obtain two other drugs essential to carrying out executions, meaning that it would be difficult to proceed even if the injunction against executions were lifted.

Nonetheless, Judge Neil Wake signed an order Thursday dropping one count of that lawsuit concerning midazolam with the provision that if the state reneges and tries to use benzodiazepams in executions the count will be reinstated and the plaintiffs can try to seek more than $2 million in attorneys' fees.