Execution violated inmate’s 8th amendment rights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3_63OPrEWQ

Dennis McGuire was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1989 murder and rape of Joy Stewart, who was also eight months pregnant at the time.

Dennis McGuire's execution took nearly 25 minutes, a significantly prolonged death than the ordinary executions which would take just over 1 minute to complete. This new method was supposedly meant to have little pain and be over almost instantly, however this wasn't the case. McGuire experienced over 10 minutes of gasping and struggling for air before his eventual death.

The eighth amendment states "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted" McGuire's execution is a violation of this amendment because he was being put to death using a combination of drugs that had never before been used as a method of a lethal injection execution. Therefore this can be regarded as a "unusual punishment" because it was practically an experiment to see whether the new drugs would work, which it didn't. To make matters worse the Federal Judge Gregory Frost rejected appeals that argued that the new drugs would cause excess suffering, therefore due to the execution taking such an excessive amount of time does challenge the eighth amendment because it becomes a much crueller form of death.  

However in the case of Glossip v Gross the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states can continue to use midazolam in executions, this is primarily due to the fact that no other suitable replacement is available. In that respect it's fair to suggest that lethal injections are not a violation of the eight amendment but in the case of Dennis McGuire his death was prolonged to such an extent that it should be a violation on the grounds of a "cruel and unusual punishment". If the correct drugs are not available anymore surely the system should be revisited to find a new method or stick to previous methods, so that death is instantaneous. If this means returning to methods that have been judged unconstitutional such as hanging, electrocution, gassing or shooting then the system should be looked into further to prevent events like this reoccurring.