Expert Says Arizona’s First Execution in 8 Years was 'Botched' b/c Uncivilized Authorities Improperly Inserted an IV Line into Native American Man’s Groin to Murder Him

From [HERE] In an execution an expert has characterized as “botched,“ Arizona Department of Corrections personnel failed for 25 minutes to set an intravenous line in Clarence Dixon’s arms on May 11, 2002 before performing a bloody and apparently unauthorized “cutdown“ procedure to insert the IV line into a vein in his groin. It was the first execution the state had carried out after a nearly eight-year hiatus following the botched two-hour execution of Joseph Wood on July 23, 2014. DIxon was a mentally disabled Native American man.

Fox News media witness, Troy Hayden, reported that the execution team had trouble inserting the IV line and that Dixon appeared to be in pain and grimaced during the insertion process. He said that after about 25 minutes the execution team cut into Dixon’s groin to place the IV line there. Associated Press reporter Paul Davenport, who also witnessed the execution and saw the incision being made, said at the post-execution news conference that execution team members had “to wipe up a fair amount of blood“ from Dixon’s groin. Taylor Tasler, a media witness from Phoenix NBC affiliate KTAR, reported that Dixon gasped after the drugs were administered, before losing consciousness.

Lethal-injection experts said the amount of time it took to set the IV line was indicative of serious problems. “It’s a sign of desperation (on the part of the execution team), and it’s a sign of an unqualified executioner,” Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno said. Austin Sarat, an Amherst College professor and author of Gruesome Spectacles: The Cultural Reception of Botched Executions in America, said “the repeated efforts to place the IVs were serious problems in the execution itself.” Sarat noted that Dixon’s execution appeared to have violated Arizona’s execution protocol, which, he said, allows “peripheral IV catheters or a central femoral line as determined by the Director acting upon the recommendation of the IV Team Leader” but does not include a “cut-down” to insert an IV in the groin. 

Michael Radelet, a University of Colorado-Boulder sociologist and longtime death-penalty researcher, said, “I would classify it as a botch, recognizing that not everyone would agree with that. But things did not go right.” Dixon’s execution, Sarat said, “shows yet again that lethal injection is by no means a humane process.”