Convicted killer of 2 in 1989 robbery is executed

Eric John King's death at the state prison in Florence was Arizona's first execution since October and one of the last expected to use a three-drug lethal injection method.

As the death chamber's curtains opened, King, 47, smiled broadly at someone he knew and waved with a hand under a sheet that covered him to his neck. When asked if he had any last words, King calmly said, "No." He then looked around at the estimated 30 witnesses in the room, at times smiling.

As he was sedated, King breathed heavily for several seconds, then appeared to go to sleep.

Charles Ryan, corrections director, announced that King was declared dead at 10:22 a.m., 13 minutes after a medical staff member confirmed King had been sedated.

The inmate had maintained his innocence since his arrest, and his lawyers fought until the last minute to get his sentence reversed or delayed.

Defense attorney Michael Burke said after the execution that there is no way to know whether King experienced pain after first being injected with sodium thiopental, a sedative that Burke has argued could be ineffective. The second drug paralyzes the inmate before potassium chloride is injected to stop his heart, so if the sedative didn't work through the entire procedure, King could have felt pain without showing it.

"You'd have no way of knowing if he was in pain or not," Burke said. "As an observer, he closed his eyes and took some breaths, and I didn't see him move after. It doesn't really give me any solace."

The Arizona Supreme Court declined to stay King's execution Monday after Burke argued that the state should wait until it enacts its new lethal injection protocol. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene.

Ryan announced Friday that Arizona will switch to using just one drug in an effort to allay any "perceived concerns" that sodium thiopental is ineffective, but only after the scheduled executions of King and Daniel Wayne Cook on April 5.