Ohio killer Dennis McGuire was executed on Thursday via a lethal two-drug drug cocktail never before used.
Officials at the prison used the combination of midazolam, a sedative, and the painkiller hydromorphone, reports The Associated Press.
McGuire, who was convicted in the 1989 rape and murder of a young pregnant woman, took 15 minutes to die, during which he made either snorting or snoring noises and appeared to try to wave to his family.
The new combination was used as Ohio had run out of pentobarbital, which is no longer available for prisons to use on condemned criminals as the European companies that manufacture the drug don't want it used that way.
According to CNN, no one was exactly sure how the lethal injection would affect McGuire, something his defense team was worried about. They had argued he could suffer from something known as air hunger before dying.
"Lawyers for McGuire contend that he will suffocate to death in agony and terror," Professor Elisabeth A. Semel, the director of the Death Penalty Clinic at U.C. Berkeley School of Law wrote. "The state disagrees. But the truth is that no one knows exactly how McGuire will die, how long it will take or what he will experience in the process."
McGuire had tried to get the execution delayed, claiming he wanted to be an organ donor, but unlike fellow death row inmate Ron Philips, he didn't have anyone specific in his family he could identify as needing his organs. Without that, prison policy dictated that his reprieve had to be denied.