Joe Nathan James was set to be executed by the state of Alabama at 6 pm on July 28. But the execution was delayed by three hours, and when media personnel was finally allowed into the execution chamber, they saw a man who appeared unconscious as prison employees read his death warrant and asked for his last words.
"My initial impression of James was of someone whose hands and wrists had been burst by needles, in every place one can bend or flex," wrote Elizabeth Bruenig, who was present for a private autopsy, in The Atlantic. "James, it appeared, had suffered a long death. The state seems to have attempted to insert IV catheters into each of his hands just above the knuckles, resulting in broad smears of violet bruising. Then it looked as though the execution team had tried again, forcing needles into each of his wrists, with the same bleeding beneath the skin and the same indigo mottling around the puncture wounds." Bruenig also described a deep cut in James' arm, possibly created to expose a vein.
