McCain on Arizona execution: ‘That’s torture.’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/mccain-on-arizona-execution-thats-torture/2014/07/25/07b01408-9d1d-4173-a60a-786388637ed5_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage

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Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) said the drawn out execution Wednesday of an Arizona inmate was “torture.”

McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, told Politico in an interview that while he believes in the death penalty for “certain crimes,” what happened in Arizona “is not an acceptable way of carrying it out. And people who were responsible should be held responsible. … The lethal injection needs to be an indeed lethal injection and not the bollocks-up situation that just prevailed. That’s torture.”

The execution of convicted murderer Joseph R. Wood III, who was killed by lethal injection Wednesday in Arizona, took nearly two hours. Witnesses reported that Wood was gasping and struggling to breathe, though state officials and other witnesses argued he was only snoring. But the amount of time it took Wood to die — so long his attorneys were able to file requests asking for a stay while the execution was ongoing — prompted Gov. Jan Brewer (R) to order a review.