Here's what I found on some other sites about the injections, MrDevious. Normally the first chemical apparently puts the condemed people to sleep so they don't feel the others. But that doesn't sound like what happened in the 34-minute Florida case. From what I've read, they didn't get his IV inserted properly. It apparently went into tissue instead of into a vein.

I know this is a similar method to the one veterinarians use to euthanize animals. First sedation, then the other two chemicals stop respiration and heart activity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection
http://people.howstuffworks.com/lethal-injection.htm
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/arti...scid=8&did=479
birdgirl73 Reviewed by birdgirl73 on . Fla. to Investigate 34 Minute Execution December 15, 2006 3:41 AM EST Fla. to Investigate 34-Minute Execution JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Defense attorneys and death penalty opponents were outraged Thursday over an execution in which the condemned man took more than half an hour to die, needed a rare second dose of lethal chemicals, and appeared to grimace in his final moments. "I am definitely appalled at what happened. I have no doubt he suffered unduly," Angel Nieves Diaz's attorney, Suzanne Myers Keffer, said after Diaz died Rating: 5