Florida's incoming governor said last night he would suspend executions after a medical examiner found that it took a condemned killer 34 minutes to die from a lethal injection because the needles were inserted improperly.
Governor-elect Charlie Crist, who takes office on January 2nd, said he would halt executions until a commission appointed to investigate the state's procedure completes its work.
Earlier yesterday, outgoing Governor Jeb Bush appointed a commission to study the state's execution procedures. Normore executions had been scheduled in the remaining term of Mr Bush, the younger brother of President George W. Bush.
The current governor was responding to the state medical examiner's report that said needles used in the execution of Angel Diaz on Wednesday punctured through veins, allowing the chemicals to leak out and slowing their effect.
Diaz's slow death triggered an avalanche of criticism from death penalty opponents.
"The main problem in the conduct of this execution procedure was that the fluids to be injected were not going into a vein," state medical examiner William Hamilton, who performed the autopsy, told reporters in a conference call.
Florida Department of Corrections Secretary Jim McDonough told journalists that members of the execution team reported they did not see Diaz suffer.
"The indications from all members of the execution team upon questioning of the process review committee no indications" of pain, he said.
That conflicts with accounts by reporters and others who said Diaz appeared to grimace and gasp for breath in what was supposed to be a quick, deadly, but painless, procedure.
"During the time Mr Diaz appeared to be speaking, it was my observation that he was in pain," Neal Dupree, an attorney representing death row inmates for the group Capital Collateral, testified in a petition filed with the Florida Supreme Court.
"His face was contorted, and he grimaced on several occasions. His Adam's Apple bobbed up and down continually, and his jaw was clenched," Mr Dupree said.
Prison officials had to give Diaz the drugs twice and initially said it took Diaz so long to die because he had liver disease, which slowed absorption of the chemicals.
Diaz was condemned to die for the 1979 murder of a Miami strip club manager. His death reignited controversy over lethal injection, which is under review in several states.
The United States is one of 69 countries and territories that use the death penalty, while 128 countries have abolished it, according to Amnesty International.
The United States has executed 53 prisoners this year, the lowest number in a decade.