Angel Diaz finally died after 34 minutes and two lethal injections in Florida.
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said she doesn’t believe Diaz felt any pain. She said Diaz started snoring and became unconscious after the first three drugs were administered and never regained consciousness.
Medical findings contradict prison officials
Diaz, 55, was put to death for murdering the manager of a Miami topless bar during a holdup in 1979.The medical examiner’s findings contradicted the explanation given by prison officials, who said Diaz needed the second dose because liver disease caused him to metabolize the lethal drugs more slowly. Hamilton said that although there were records that Diaz had hepatitis, his liver appeared normal.
Executions in Florida normally take no more than about 15 minutes, with the inmate rendered unconscious and motionless within three to five minutes. But Diaz appeared to be moving 24 minutes after the first injection, grimacing, blinking, licking his lips, blowing and appearing to mouth words.
As a result of the chemicals going into Diaz’s arms around the elbow, he had a 12-inch chemical burn on his right arm and an 11-inch chemical burn on his left arm, Hamilton said.
Florida Corrections Secretary James McDonough said the execution team did not see any swelling of the arms, which would have been an indication that the chemicals were going into tissues and not veins.
Diaz’s attorney, Suzanne Myers Keffler, reacted angrily to the findings.
“This is complete negligence on the part of the state,” she said. “When he was still moving after the first shot of chemicals, they should have known there was a problem and they shouldn’t have continued. This shows a complete disregard for Mr. Diaz. This is disgusting.”
Governor Jeb Bush halted further executions after medical examiners said that Diaz’s execution had been botched. California halted executions in February after a legal challenge to the state by a condemned inmate that said lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment. The federal judge who ruled in that case said executions could go forward only in the presence of licensed anesthesiologists and other medical proffesionals, but none agreed to participate.
Although I am not personally opposed to the death penalty in some extreme cases, there is no way to kill someone humanely. I am less worried about that though than I am about the executions of innocent people and the overwhelmingly dispproportionate sentencing and executions of minorities. But Mr. Diaz’s execution was handled so badly, and he is only one of many who suffered during their deaths, that the practice should be stopped completely, nationwide, as Senators Feingold and Corzine appealed in 2002, though they focused more on the high number of death row inmates who had been exonerated through DNA testing and reexamining cases that were defended badly. Former Illinois Governor Ryan stopped executions for the same reasons in 2000. He went so far as to commute all of the state’s death row inmate’s sentences to life in prison.
I’m just throwing this up for discussion. I have complicated and tortured feelings about the death penalty in general even though I believe that some crimes are so horrendous as to justify ending the life of the one who commited it.
