Twelve minutes. The LA Times:
SAN QUENTIN — At 12:01 Tuesday morning, having exhausted all appeals, Stanley Tookie Williams walked slowly into San Quentin's death chamber, shackled at the wrists and waist and escorted by four burly guards.
After he climbed onto a padded gurney, officers buckled Williams down with wide black straps across his shins, thighs, belly and chest. His arms, stretched out to the side, were secured with leather restraints.
At 12:03 a.m., two guards pulled on surgical gloves as another entered the mint-green chamber with a plastic tub of supplies. Three minutes later, a needle was thrust successfully home into Williams' right arm and connected to an intravenous tube.
The rules, however, require a backup in case one tube is jostled loose or fails. And it was here that the carefully choreographed execution turned messy.
For 12 long minutes, a prison nurse — her brow glistening with sweat — poked the convict's muscular left arm again and again, searching for a vein that would deliver a dose of poison. As his loved ones watched in distress, the inmate visibly winced in pain.
Ultimately, the needle found its mark, a stream of lethal chemicals flowed, and Williams — convicted of murdering four people with a shotgun in 1979 — drew his final breath.
We are mere barbarians. With cell phones and prescription drugs.