Fox is first with reports of Williams death; CNN moments later

Stanley “Tookie” Williams was executed as scheduled this morning and declared dead at 12:35 PST.

Fox’s Claudia Cowan was first with the news at 3:37 am on my clock; CNN cut quickly back from commercial and had the news less than a minute later. MSNBC had been re-broadcasting “Hardball” but when I switched over it had gone live, so I can’t say for sure that it didn’t beat Fox, but since Cowan got the news on-camera and mid-sentence it’s unlikely.

MSNBC’s Rita Cosby was one of the witnesses, saying that after the injections, Williams appeared to be breathing heavily and his stomach was “contracting in extreme form” for about three minutes, after which “it took ten more minutes for him to actually die.”

David Wohl of CBS2 Palm Springs: “This took much, much longer than I thought it would.”

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