On Thursday, a U.S. District Court judge in Phoenix lifted a stay imposed in November 2014, four months after executioners hired by the Corrections Department injected 15 doses of a drug cocktail into convicted murderer Joseph Wood.
One dose was supposed to kill him, but instead, Wood snorted and gasped as witnesses watched and attorneys argued in a telephone call to the judge about whether to stop the execution.
Judge Neil Wake, who had presided over years of litigation over execution protocols, ordered the Corrections Department to investigate the flawed execution and litigate its execution protocol with attorneys representing other death-row inmates.
Wake shut down executions until such time as the case was settled or adjudicated.
