Featured Image Credit: Police handout/Sky News
Topics: Crime
Ellie Kemp
A murderer angered his victim's family with his final words before being executed via lethal injection.
In August 7, 1989, Joseph Wood killed his ex-girlfriend Debra Dietz and her late father Eugene Dietz. He reportedly walked into their family-owned car body store in Tuscon, Arizona and shot them.
Debbie, 29, had not long obtained a restraining order against him after ending their five-year relationship amid alleged domestic violence.
He was jailed at Florence State Prison after being convicted of both murders.
Advert
After spending 25 years behind bars, Wood was ordered to be killed by lethal injection in July 2014.
But it took more than two hours for him to die in a 'botched' execution that resulted in a 'cruel and unusual' death.
In his last moments, he reportedly looked at the Dietz family and said: "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."
It took one hour and 57 minutes for Woods to die, instead of the usual 10 minutes that a lethal injection should take. He reportedly gasped more than 600 times, with his legal team requesting the execution be stopped.
At the time, one of his lawyers, Dale Baich, said that the prolonged death could have been prevented, branding it a 'cruel' and 'unusual punishment'.
However, the State Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan insisted that Wood would have felt 'no pain' at the end of his life, adding: "Throughout this execution, I conferred and collaborated with our IV team members and was assured unequivocally that the inmate was comatose and never in pain or distress."
The Dietz family told Sky News at the time that what they saw was 'nothing' compared to the pain of what their family members had faced.
Debbie's sister Jeanne Dietz said: "What I saw today with him being executed, it is nothing compared to what happened on August 7, 1989.
"What's excruciating is seeing your father lying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister lying in a pool of blood."
Meanwhile, Debbie's brother-in-law Richard Brown added: "I saw the life go out of my sister-in-law's eyes.You guys are blowing it all out of proportion about these drugs.
"This man, he conducted a horrifying murder, and you worry about the drug and how it affects him. Why don't we give him a bullet? Why don't we give him some Drano? Now my family can rest in peace."
For eight years, Arizona halted all executions following Wood's 'botched' experience.
Inmates executions were resumed in May 2022.