Judge gets heat for anti-execution protest
Arkansas jurist faces outrage of death-penalty supporters, calls for impeachment
LITTLE ROCK, ARK.— After barring Arkansas from executing eight inmates in rapid succession because of a dispute over how it obtained one of its execution drugs, Judge Wendell Griffen went to an anti-deathpenalty rally, where he made a stir by lying down on a cot and binding himself as though he were a condemned man on a gurney.
Griffen’s participation in Friday’s protest outside the governor’s mansion sparked outrage among deathpenalty supporters, including Republican politicians who described it as judicial misconduct and potential grounds for Griffen’s removal from the bench.
Griffen, a Pulaski County Circuit judge, said he’s morally opposed to the death penalty and that his per- sonal beliefs alone shouldn’t disqualify him from taking up certain cases.
For years, he has been pushing the boundaries of how much a judge can speak out on controversial issues.
“We have never, in my knowledge, been so afraid to admit that people can have personal beliefs yet can follow the law, even when to follow the law means they must place their personal feelings aside,” Griffen told The Associated Press on Saturday.
On Friday, Griffen granted a restraining order preventing Arkansas from using its supply of vecuronium bromide, one of three drugs it uses in executions, because the supplier said the state misleadingly obtained the drug. The ruling came a day before a federal judge halted the executions on different grounds. The supplier, however, on Saturday sought to drop its lawsuit and have Griffen’s order lifted because it believed the federal ruling removed the imminent risk its drug would be used in executions.
The back-to-back decisions upend what had initially been a plan to exe- cute eight men in 11 days, starting Monday night, because the state’s supply of one of the other execution drugs expires at the end of the month.
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge on Saturday also asked the state’s highest court to vacate Griffen’s ruling, citing the judge’s participation in anti-death-penalty events before and after he issued it. She asked for a new judge to be assigned the case.
“This court should put a stop to the games being played by a judge who is obviously unable to preside over this case impartially,” Rutledge wrote in her request.
Griffen declined to comment on the demonstration or his ruling, saying he’d address any questions about it at a hearing he scheduled for Tuesday.
Politicians have suggested the move may be grounds for the Arkansas House to begin impeachment proceedings, saying the demonstration and a blog post Griffen wrote on the death penalty this week may amount to “gross misconduct” under the state constitution.
“He is outside the bounds of normal behaviour for most judges probably anywhere in America,” Republican state Sen. Jason Rapert said.
It’s also unclear whether the move would prompt action from the state’s Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission. Griffen, who served 12 years on the state appeals court, previously battled with the panel over remarks he made criticizing former president George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. The panel ultimately dropped its case against him.
Griffen said he wouldn’t consider a person’s participation in an antiexecution event enough, on its own, to warrant disqualifying a juror from a death-penalty case. The question, he said, is whether the juror could set his or her personal views aside and follow the law.
“We do not require people to come into court with blank slates, either in their minds or their heart,” he said.