Listen:
Joseph Wood died by lethal injection at the Arizona State Prison in Florence Wednesday afternoon, nearly two hours after the drugs first were introduced.
Wood was executed in the 1989 murders of Debbie Dietz, his former girlfriend, and her father, Eugene Dietz, at their family body shop business in Tucson.
Gov. Jan Brewer called for a Department of Corrections review of what occurred during the execution. In the same statement, she called the execution lawful and said witnesses reported that "he did not suffer. This is in stark comparison to the gruesome, vicious suffering that he inflicted on his two victims – and the lifetime of suffering he has caused their family.”
During the execution, with what Wood's lawyers described him "gasping and snorting" for breath, they filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the process.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said in a press release saying Wood had died at 3:49 p.m. The inmate’s attorneys did not immediately confirm the death, but later released a statement that said the execution drug combination was a failure.
"We will renew our efforts to get information about the manufacturer of drugs as well as how Arizona came up with the experimental formula of drugs it used today," Wood's attorney, Dale Baich, said in a statement.
Leading up to the execution, Wood had challenged the legality of his death sentence, asking for information about the drugs the state planned to use.
"Arizona appears to have joined several other states who have been responsible for an entirely preventable horror -- a bungled execution. The public should hold its officials responsible and demand to make this process more transparent," Baich's statement said.
Brewer and others said the execution was carried out as prescribed by law.
"While justice was carried out, I directed the Department of Corrections to conduct a full review of the process," the governor said in a statement. "One thing is certain, however, inmate Wood died in a lawful manner and by eyewitness and medical accounts he did not suffer."
Brewer also said Wood died, "in a lawful manner and by eyewitness and medical accounts he did not
Wood's case had gone to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to keep in place a delay in execution ordered earlier by the 9th Circuit Court.
The Arizona Supreme Court lifted the final stay of execution Wednesday morning, hours before the procedure began.
By submitting your comments, you hereby give AZPM the right to post your comments and potentially use them in any other form of media operated by this institution.