Joseph Wood was executed by lethal injection at Florence State Prison in Arizona on July 23, 2014. With a new cocktail of drugs, the execution was supposed to take about 10 minutes. It took nearly two hours. 60 Minutes will air correspondent Bill Whitaker’s report on 60 Minutes on Sunday, July 10 at 7pm on CBS.
Not all 60 Minutes fans are empathetic in considering Wood’s excruciating struggle. (Wood was injected 15 times; one injection is supposed to be sufficient to kill a person.) When 60 Minutes promoted the report on its Facebook page with the question “How long is too long to execute a murderer?”, Cheryl Arnold left this comment: “it should of took as long as the murder he did to someone…” In 1989, Wood shot his estranged girlfriend Debra Dietz and her father Eugene Dietz dead in their family auto body shop. Before his execution, Wood looked at the victims’ family and spoke his final words, “I take comfort knowing today my pain stops, and I said a prayer that on this or any other day you may find peace in all of your hearts, and may God forgive you all.”
