hashtags associated with it. thank you. that is you will athe time for this news hour. pleasure to have you with us. if you'd like the latest on these stories, head over to our website. "inside story" is next. convicted killer joseph wood finally headed to arizona's death chamber some 25 years since his crime. then it took hours for him to die. how states carry out the death penalty is the "inside story." hello. i'm ray suarez. since the u.s. supreme court cleared the way for the

reinstatement of the death penalty, states have muched away from hanging, gas chambers, firing squads, the electric chair toward lethal injection. for supporters of the death penalty, introducing a series of drugs to dispatch a convicted killer swept aside constitutional concerns about cruel and unusual punishment. now a group of states have stepped away from the death penalty either by law or in practice. foreign pharmaceutical producers refuse to sell states the drugs they use to execute prisoners, and medical associations say they don't want their members overseeing the work of killing people. it appears to be getting tougher and tougher to carry out the ultimate sanction without prolonged executions like the one this week in arizona. it took one hour and 57 minutes for convicted felon joseph wood to die. death by lethal injection is supposed to be a more humane execution method and to take

only minutes. one witness said wood gasped for air hundreds of times before falling silent. >> to watch a man lay there for an hour and 40 minutes gulping air is like catching a fish and throwing it on the shore. >> he was clearly struggling for breath, and that's atypical because usually an execution takes 10, 11 minutes, and you see virtually nothing. >> reporter: wood was sentenced to get for the 1989 double-murder of his girlfriend and her father at the family's auto body shop in tucson, arizona. >> what's excruciating is seeing your dad lying there in a pool of blood and your sister. that's excruciating. >> reporter: as the execution continued, wood's attorney filed an emergency petition to stop the process and have his client resuscitated. his attorneys argued the execution was cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the constitution. supreme court justice anthony

kennedy denied the appeal. wood was pronounced dead at 3:49 p.m. >> to me it looked like he was sleeping, he was snoring. that's what i saw. then he passed away. how is that suffering? >> reporter: arizona's department of corrections disputes wood's lawyer's claim that the execution violated the condemned man's rights. jan brewer said he died in a lawful manner and by eyewitness and medical accounts he did not suffer. nevertheless governor brewer promised a full review of the incident. this is the third case this year that called into question the procedures used for death by lethal injection. in january dennis mcguire was put to death in ohio with a two-drug combination. it was the first time ohio had used that two-drug mix. by all accounts the inmate struggled in death as his execution took 25 minutes. arizona used same two drugs.

in april clay done locket was executed in oklahoma using the drug. witnesses say locket jerked forward and appeared to be writhing in pain and then he died of a heart attack. there's no protocol, so states come up with their own formulas. some european producers have stopped selling them to states because they oppose the death penalty. it was reinstated in the united states in 1977 and it's on the books in 32 states right now. 14 states have not executed anyone in five years. nationwide polling shows diminishing support for capital punishment as violent crime rates decline as well, six states have ended their use of the death penalty since 2006. what goes on in the nation's active death chambers this time

on "inside story." why so many recent executions like that of joseph wood? the april execution of clayton locket where it took 51 minutes to find a suitable vein or the ohio execution that say dennis mcguire writhing on the gurney with fists clenched? is lethal injection more humane and less risky than the hanging and firing squad. we begin with a reporter for tucson news now that witnessed the execution of joseph wood. welcome. what are your expectations going into the death chamber? did you prepare before going in? >> this was the first time i was sent to watch an execution. i wanted to prepare myself and wanted to see what it would be like. i talked to colleagues who had experienced executions themselves by lethal injection. they said it was for the most part very clinical. they said usually the procedure

and the person dying takes about 10 minutes. that certainly wasn't the case this time. so through that research it was quite not what i -- it wasn't what i expected when i got there. >> tell us what you did see once the condemned man was strapped to the gurney and prepared for execution. >> the first 10 minutes appeared to be fine. they strapped him down. his eyes closed. he appears to just fall asleep. after those ten minutes, though, you could sort of see movement from joseph wood's body. at first a sort of movement on the side of his stomach, and then the first time i saw his throat and his mouth opening sort of like a gulp or trying to gasp for air. i counted one, two several seconds later and continued for that for like five to eight seconds for over an hour and a half. >> was there any sense that the

witnesses got that people on the team meant to carry out this execution knew something wasn't going right? >> it certainly seemed like they were continuing with the execution just looking at other people around the room. after 30, 40 minutes, people started to look around. some concerned faces trying to see if they will continue this. one of my thoughts was, how long is this going to take? are they considering stopping it? >> the state says mr. wood was never in any pain or distress. i guess pain is hard to tell and it's hard to know the truth of that. distress might be something that is observable. do you agree with the state's assessment? >> for the most part seeing wood on the table, he -- he appeared to fall asleep and his eyes were closed the entire time. as far as if he might have felt anything of that sort, it's really not known. just observing him for the most part his whole body was very

still except the gasps or the gulps he was doing every 5 to 8 seconds. it's really hard to tell if he felt anything. >> how long in all did it take to pronounce him dead, to check if this was finally over and come to a legal conclusion that the execution had been carried out? >> it was a very long process there. again, as i was doing my research, most people said it would take about ten minutes for him to die. it took an hour and 57 minutes. watching those gulps, i could really see through my notes the time line of counting those gulps 100, 200, 300. i counted 660 throughout the one hour and 40 minutes. they had medical staff come and check him six times i counted. they told us he was still

sedated, and that's how they continued to check him. >> he's a reporter for tucson news now and joins us from tucson. thanks for being with us. >> my pleasure. thank you. we're going to take a short break now, and when we come back, we'll be joined by experts, long-time observers of the national scene in capital punishment. this is "inside story." stay with us.

the state's governor jan brewer said wood did not suffer and reminded the public of the gruesome, vicious suffering he inflicted on his two victims and the lifetime of suffering he caused their family. that's a quote from jan brewer. we'll continue our look at the continuing debates over execution methods in the united states with the professor of jurisprudence and political sn at amherst college and author of gruesome spectacles and daniel le chance, a professor of history at emery university. professor la chance, in my introduction i mentioned that there was no national protocol for carrying out executions. it's been 37 years. it sounds like sufficient time

to come up with a drug regimen that kills somebody without torturing them. >> yes. unfortunately, you know, i think the history of executions in the united states shows us that this is one part of a longer history of executions and their methods becoming increasingly problematic over time and hitting a crisis moem where the people and elected officials have to decide whether or not they're going to continue to tolerate that method of execution. >> wasn't the move to lethal injection in part away to take the possibility of cruel and unusual punishment off the table? >> i think that's exactly right. in fact, if you look at the history of the capital punishment in the 20th century in the united states, it's a kind of romance of technology. the search for a method of execution that would be safe,

reliable and humane, if you go back to the beginning of the century and look what was said about electrocution and what was said about the gas chamber and finally in the late 1970s, early 1980s what proponents of lethal injection said about that technique, it's all of the same. each method is proclaimed to be more humane, more reliable and safer than the rest, and let me just say the idea of a national protocol for lethal injection runs up against several bear yirs, the most important of which is the death penalty is mostly a state affair. each state has a right to decide on the method of execution and to develop it's own protocol. we could have a kind of model stat statue. the justice department could offer guidance, but at the end of the day, the protocol and forms of drugs used increasingly

whether or not states are going to tell the condemned where they get the drugs, all that's really a matter of state prerogative. >> perhaps a better phrase might be "nationally understood technique" rather than national protocol. not a requirement, but the idea that we actually learned something over time and methods for executing prisoners demonstrates some sort of learning kufcurve. in the case of the arizona execution this week, they used the same two-drug cocktail that's been just as problematic in other death chambers around the country. >> look, we can talk about the death penalty that we wish we had. that's one way of talking about the death penalty. i much prefer that we look at the death penalty we have. when you look at the death penalty we actually have, the death penalty system in the united states seeming to be on

the verge of collapse. if you look at the process through which we determine who is guilty and innocent, you've seen that the death penalty system doesn't function very well in differentiating the guilty from the innocent. if you look at the process through which we select among those who we have convicted, who will get the death penalty, there we see it filled with bias and arbitrariness. now with respect to to the execution, americans are coming to terms with the fact that there is no safe, reliable guarantee that when we execute people we will not violate and damage some very important american values. >> professor la chance, for all the problems that professor sarid identifies, the death penalty still enjoying majority support among americans, and certainly if you break it apart regionally, there are parts of the countries that are solidly for it while others backed away. isn't that the case? >> it is the case. i mean, you know, those polling numbers that we hear so often

are simply answers to the question, does a person who has has been convicted of first-degree murder deserve to be put to death? however, we pound when we change the question american support drops dramatically for the death penalty. if you ask people if there's an option of life without parole, support for the death penalty declines. if you ask if they support putting capital murderers in prison for the rest of their life and having them work and the proceeds go to family members of the victims, it declines even further. so part of the problem with polls is they only capture a kind of broad, general sense of support for the death penalty without these qualifiers that really do make a difference. i always say support for the death penalty is a mile wide, but it's really an inch deep. >> if we go to some states that have the most active death chambers, today in 2014, there wouldn't be majority support for the use of that sanction in

states like texas, like oklahoma? >> absolutely there would be majority support, but again, it's the question that we ask people when we poll them. when you just ask them do you support the death penalty? most americans say yes, and that will happen all over the country and even in europe where the death penalty has been abolished by the european union. again, it really depends on proving people's ideas about justice and what those ideas mean. i would add that even in texas, which is the capital of capital punishment, only 40% or so of the people that have been sentenced to death there have actually suffered the ultimate penalty because the appellate process has grown so long over the years and created a real backlog there as well. >> we're going to take a short break, and when we come back, we'll talk about the future of the death penalty in this country as states, even though they don't have laws, have stopped to use it and it becomes more and more difficult to

obtain the drugs at that states are using to carry out the executions. this is "inside story." stay with us.

and as the prolonged executions in various states have demonstrated, the current system may not be serving the purposes that saw states moving away from other methods in the first place. joins our discussion now is karrina lane, professor at the university of richmond law school and still with us, the professor of jurisprudence and political science at amherst college and daniel le chance, a professor of history at emory university. professor lane, just before you joined us, we were talking about what austin called the death

penalty we actual have versus the one we think we have. in practice is it getting tougher to execute condemned americans? >> it absolutely is. it has been getting tougher since january 2011 when the primary domestic producer of the drug pulled out of the market. >> was that a stated objective of that producer, to stop making this, stop importing it, stop supplying it? how did that happen? >> yeah. it actually was. the sole domestic producer of the drug was hospira. they had a north carolina plant and moved to italy. italy has long-standing opposition to capital punishment, and the italian authorities said, we're not going to license the plant unless you can guarantee that your product will not be used in

capital punishment. also, there was some talk about the company being held liable if its product was known to be used in capital punishment for aiding and abetting capital punishment, which is against the law in italy. so they made the decision that it was going to get out of the market entirely, and it stopped producing it. >> the surprising part about that is if there's any motif of the last generation, it's that you can buy anything you want anywhere in the world if you want it badly enough. it seems strange that correctional institutions can't simply wade into a worldwide market and acquire desired chemicals. >> yeah, it really is. i call that the advent of the moral marketplace. it is strange, because we think that the -- we think of the supply side of the market as

amoral. if you want skinny jeans, the market will supply that. you want heroin, the market will supply it. perhaps not legally, but it will supply it. that's not what we're seeing in the death penalty area, but it is strange. >> it is surprising they haven't found ways to come up with another method in the absence of desired chemicals? >> i think you've seen some states anxious about the future of lethal injection and pass legislation to make the death penalty default to another mode of execution in the event that lethal injection is declared unconstitutional. so i think states have had this on their radar screen and have maneuvered appropriately, and that's why i'm a little bit skeptical about the potential for these botched executions to end the death penalty. >> professor, you probably saw

the remarks of a federal appeals court judge who satirically suggested it might be more humane to return to the guillotine and firing squad given the difficulties of putting people to death by lethal injection. would the public stand for returning to some of the old methods, or are we somehow more comfortable with the idea that someone is strapped down and sedated before they're killed? >> again, i think the history of the death penalty is a history of a kind of romance with scientific progress. i don't think that the future of the death penalty can be secured by returning to technologies of execution and methods of execution which themselves are rife with problems. if you look at the history of the death penalty in the 20th century of the united states, what you see is about 3% of all american executions have been botched. in the period of use of lethal

injection, about 7% of all lethal injections have been botched. if you drilled down and look at certain states like north carolina or ohio, as much as 18% of executions have been botched, and we're at a particularly important period. never before, i think, in american history have botched executions played as large a roll they play right now in the debate about capital punishment, and that's because the debate isn't just about the methodologies of execution and the drugs. the debate is about whether or not the death penalty system that we have today from beginning to end, whether that death penalty system can comport with american values or whether the cost of this death penalty system to those values, the values of due process and equal protection and fairness and the prohibition of punishment cause damage to those values is

frankly just no longer worth pays and no longer worth enduring. >> professor lane, is it safe to assume that when something like this arizona execution happens, it makes news in the countries where we used to import these chemicals? >> oh, it absolutely has. europe has been particularly interested, but other countries and continents have been interested in watching what the united states is doing with it's death penalty. actually, just to add to professor sarat's commenting, i think there's two things going on. one is that the botched executions come against a backdrop where the american public is very am bif lent about the death penalty. the death penalty has for years had so many problems, whether it's actual innocence claims. there's been over 140 people

exonerated from death row, racial discrimination, geographic discrimination, inadequate counsel. it's exoshg tant costs and has problems to start with. now we can't get the drugs, and it's for like states on the margin already about the death penalty, for states that are t not -- haven't been executing and have de facto abolitionist states, that can make the difference. we can't get the drugs to do it. people are paying attention to that, and then the state's response to the shortage is exacerbating the very tension that austin is talking about. what are the states' response? secrecy. we won't tell you the drugs we're using or the sources so you can look and see if they're regulated or they have a fungus in them like the one that cost over 60 people their lives in

2012. secrecy. speed. missouri has executed people while they're -- a federal court is still reviewing their appeals, and the substitutes, the unregulated substitutes. so it's changing the nature of the conversation about the death penalty in the united states sort of from this oh, well, look what the offender did, which has always been there, to, yeah, look at the extent that the state is willing to sacrifice due process values to get their pound of flesh. >> professor lee chance, we just have a few seconds left. does this explain to you what professor lane just laid out? those states that haven't made the political decision to actually abolish but in practice aren't carrying out any executions? >> yeah. i think that's a big part of the story that we see unfold here. i ultimately think that the death penalty will be undone not by these botched executions but

by the ever-growing appellate process which is an average of 16 1/2 years from sentencing to execution. the death penalty isn't just delivering the justice it promises to supporters, and that will be the undoing in the united states. >> thank you very much for being with us today on the program. that brings us to the end of this edition of "inside story." thanks for being with us. in washington, i'm ray suarez.

>> in 2012 the us supreme court ruled that states could opt out of a key component of the affordable care act. the requirement to cover more poor americans through medicaid expansion. >> we're in south-central florida about 45 minutes west of orlando to meet denise wade. denise and her husband barry were living the good life-good jobs, insurance, house. they didn't realize how vulnerable they were. but despite assurances that the federal government would largely fund