Arizona inmate's botched execution takes almost two hours

Joseph Rudolph Wood, an inmate in an Arizona prison, died after almost two hours after being administered a drug protocol in a botched execution.

Wood snorted and gasped for an hour and 57 minutes after the drug cocktail was injected. His lawyers had filed an emergency appeal with the US Supreme Court while the execution was under way, demanding that it be stopped.

Wood was sentenced to death for killing Debra Dietz and her father, Eugene Dietz, in 1989  in Tucson, Arizona.

The case has highlighted scrutiny surrounding lethal injections in the wake of other botched executions.

Wood was executed with a combination of midazolam and hydromorphone, which had only been used once previously, for the execution of Dennis McGuire in January 2014 in Ohio, a similarly controversial case. McGuire's execution had also been described as "botched", due to McGuire appearing to snort, gasp, and convulse during a procedure that lasted 25 minutes