Before Joseph Wood's controversial execution Wednesday in Arizona, one federal judge reviewing the case earlier in the week opined that states should consider abandoning lethal injection executions in favor of a return to "more primitive" and "foolproof" methods such as the firing squad.
Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote an opinion Monday expressing his belief that Arizona would ultimately prevail in its attempt to execute Wood, who was convicted of killing his estranged girlfriend and her father in 1989.
But using drugs to carry out executions is a "misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful," Kozinski said.
His words seem almost eerily prescient after conflicting reports emerged regarding whether Woods died peacefully, as one witness said, or gasping for air as another witness suggested. His execution took nearly two hours.
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The execution rate in the United States has declined in the last two decades, but what the late Justice Harry Blackmun famously called “the machinery of death” remains deeply flawed. Two recent controversial executions illustrate how capital punishment continues to defy attempts at civilizing.