Slow death prompts renewed calls to end US executions

· Convicted murderer takes half-an-hour to die
· Man given two injections grimaces in pain
Campaigners in the US have renewed calls for the abolition of the death penalty after a convicted murderer took more than half-an-hour to die and needed a second dose of lethal chemicals.

Witnesses reported that Angel Nieves Diaz, who killed the manager of a Miami nightclub in a robbery 27 years ago, was grimacing with pain and still moving more than 20 minutes after the first injections at the Florida state prison in Starke.

"They executed him twice," said Mark Elliot, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "He was still conscious when they put in the chemicals that burn the internal organs. It's exactly like being burned at the stake from the inside."

Diaz, 55, had fought a lengthy legal battle with the state, arguing that death by lethal injection constituted a cruel and unusual punishment.

His final appeal to the US supreme court was rejected an hour before his execution.

His death comes at a time of national debate about the use of injections. A similar case is before the courts in California, where convicted murderer Michael Morales is arguing the method is inhumane. The three-drug cocktail of sodium thiopental, an anaesthetic; pancuronium bromide, which paralyses the body; and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest, is used in 37 US states.

Gretl Plessinger, a spokeswoman for Florida's Department of Corrections, said that Diaz was snoring soon after the first injection, did not regain consciousness and felt no pain throughout. She said a second dose was given because he had liver disease, which slowed his metabolism, but acknowledged that he had taken an unusually long time to die.

The last two executions at Starke were completed within 15 minutes. A statement from Florida governor Jeb Bush's office said: "A pre-existing medical condition of the inmate was the reason tonight's procedure took longer than recent procedures carried out this year."

Mr Elliot said Diaz's death would increase the scrutiny of lethal injections. "His execution, and the way it was mishandled, could lead to a change in the way executions are carried out nationwide," he said.

"If you hang somebody and the rope breaks and you hang them again, you've succeeded in executing them, but you've still botched the original execution."

The execution was the 21st of Mr Bush's eight-year tenure as Florida governor and the last before he leaves office on January 2. His brother George Bush, the US president, oversaw 152 executions in his six years as governor of Texas.

Florida lawmakers voted to switch to lethal injection in 2000 after a series of bungled executions using the electric chair. In the most notorious incident, in 1997, flames shot from the head of a prisoner during an execution.

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