TRANSCRIPT: Lawyer’s Frantic Call To Judge During Botched Execution

[DonViejo]

Source: TPM

By DYLAN SCOTT Published JULY 24, 2014, 3:03 PM EDT

As condemned Arizona killer Joseph Rudolph Wood III lay dying for nearly two hours on the execution table in state prison, his lawyer frantically pleaded over the phone with a federal judge to halt the botched lethal injection.

A transcript released Thursday of the call reveals a 30-minute conversation in which public defender Robin Konrad sought a stay of execution for Wood after the execution had already begun and appeared to be going wrong. Konrad spoke on the phone with federal district Judge Neil Wake and Assistant Arizona Attorney General Jeff Zick.

The execution was supposed to last 10 minutes, but about 10 minutes after it began, Konrad said, Wood began to breathe and opened his mouth. "He has been gasping and snorting for over an hour," she said, citing an attorney at the scene.

Zick then said that a medical professional at the scene said that Wood had exhibited "an involuntary reaction or a snoring-type reaction," but that he was unconscious.

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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/arizona-execution-court-transcript

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Link to full transcript:

Arizona Execution Court Transcript

Link to the rest of the news article plus the transcript:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/arizona-execution-court-transcript

[elleng]

1. Discussed on Rachel show.

Reading transcript.

[samsingh]

2. i can't help picture the horror his victims left as this killer executed them

[Ed Suspicious]

5. Irrelevant.

[samsingh]

19. that's an awful thiing to say and cold

[Small Accumulates]

7. Does that mean that In Your Name you condone the torture of this human being?

Do you agree to bear the burden, whatever that is, for the harm caused by the painful method by which this man was executed? In what way are you different from him? Are you in line for atoning for your own wish for harm? Be very careful of the burden you pick up here.

[samsingh]

20. i didn't kill innocent people

i'm not a murderer.

perhaps you should ask those questions of people who have murdered others.

[Kelvin Mace]

9. OK, fine let us assume this guy "deserved" to die.

However, given the undeniable flaws in our criminal justice system, it is certain that innocent people have and will be executed in the pursuit of capital punishment.

Please answer the following question:

How many innocent people is it okay to kill in order to execute the "guilty"?

Round numbers please.

[samsingh]

21. nothing more than 0 is acceptable

[joshcryer]

6. Good judge for assuring he was not ruling out pain.

[MillennialDem]

8. The problem is in the quest to be "humane" during the death penalty we have become

ever more inhumane - and the damn death penalty is inhumane no matter how you slice it. So trying to make it humane is an oxymoron.

It's lethal injection it's humane to the actors and witnesses who carry it out but not the condemned. It makes it seem like they are doing some clinical medical procedure but it's anything but that. Beheading is about as humane as it gets, but it is gross and disturbing for the executioners and the witnesses. That's why we don't do it. Then we switched to firing squad and made it humane to the executioners by giving one or more of them blanks. But then sometimes the condemned would survive and require another shot or two to the noggin to finish the job. Then we try this and other methods and it leads to the condemned suffering before going brain dead.

If I were a judge in AZ I'd block enforcement of the death penalty and make the appeals court and possibly the supremes weigh in. Just like the conservatives do with abortion and Obamacare. 500th time is the charm!

[LisaL]

10. The problem is, the drugs for lethal injection are made in Europe.

And it refuses to sell it to US to be used for lethal injection.
So they are now using something that obviously isn't working very well.

[MillennialDem]

12. Doesn't really matter. Drugs are no guarantee of a quick, humane death. Some people react

differently to different drugs.

For example I am completely immune to certain painkillers. I found this out at the dentist. They ended up giving me what seemed like 20 shots during a root canal before figuring it out. My mouth wouldn't go numb at all. Tried a different one and bam it works.

Have run into this with several other painkillers in other situations.

We need to get rid of the death penalty altogether. I don't propose making it more humane for the condemned (again, just get rid of it), but in a constrained thought experiment only I would say bring back the guillotine (or even better, improve it in ways I won't go into).

[thesquanderer]

18. We know how to kill humanely. We do it when we put down pets.

There's an interesting story as to why we don't use such simple, quick, painless, and effective methods on people.

See: "Three-Drug Protocol Persists for Lethal Injections, Despite Ease of Using One" at

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/02/science/three-drug-protocol-persists-for-lethal-injections-despite-ease-of-using-one.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[GliderGuider]

22. Inert-gas asphyxiation would work too.

Burt then we wouldn't get to watch to guy suffer as he died, and where would the schadenfreude be in that?

[easychoice]

11. They had morphine there...Hydromorphone...

They could have killed him in about 5 minutes if they weren't incompetent boobs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphine

[snot]

13. Sh*t, yeah.

People OD on opiates regularly. We shouldn't be killing people at all. But given the stomach-turning premise that we're going to do it anyway, it's obvious that it could be done MUCH more humanely.

[easychoice]

14. I don't agree with the death penalty at all...

But ya know what? We are never going to stop these psychos from getting away with working the legal system to kill people once in a while.
At least until we catch them and chase them back to their cave.
I just gotta wonder what kind of a slack jawed homer simpson of a Doctor would stand there and let this happen.

[blkmusclmachine]

15. Where are all the Third Way'ers, to tell us how much this criminal deserved it???

[lululu]

16. I have no idea what a third wayer is

As to whether or not he deserved to die in this particular manner, I'd say yes. It's nothing like as bad as what he did.

[DonViejo]

17. Revenge is as heinous a motivation for killing, even if state-sponsored, as was the murderer's

motivation for taking innocent lives.