Multiple execution plans on hold after court ruling United’s descent into ignominy
Despite a court ruling that puts its plans in jeopardy, Arkansas hoped to go ahead with the executions of six men between Monday and April 27.
The last time that a state put more than one inmate to death on the same day was more than 16 years ago when Texas executed two condemned killers in back-to-back lethal injections — they were declared dead 33 minutes apart.
Other than the moment when one of the men lashed out at family members and police officers who testified against him at trial, the executions went quietly and without any difficulties.
‘‘I don’t remember any problems,’’ said Jim Willett, the warden in the death chamber the evening of August 9, 2000, when the double execution happened. ‘‘I’m not trying to make light of it, but if you can do it right once, why can’t you do it twice the same day?’’
Not even Texas, the nation’s most active death penalty state, has scheduled multiple executions in a single day in recent years.
In today’s capital punishment landscape, death penalty opponents are as vocal as ever and some states have struggled with drug shortages, legal challenges and flawed executions.
Amid all this, Arkansas had scheduled a series of executions starting Monday that would include the first double executions since the one in Texas in 2000. The state initially planned to execute eight inmates in all, starting Monday, with four nights of double executions through the end of the month, as the state rushes to beat an expiration deadline for one of the three drugs it uses to carry out an execution. But after judges halted two of the executions, Arkansas’ plan was in limbo yesterday after a state judge blocked the use of one of its lethal injection drugs — a decision effectively halt the altogether.
Some attorneys and anti-death penalty groups question whether the quick turnarounds will stress out the prison staff and cause mistakes.
Three years ago in Oklahoma, an attempt to execute two inmates on the same April day was thwarted after the first prisoner writhed and moaned on the gurney in a lethal injection the corrections chief tried to halt before the inmate’s death 43 minutes later. An investigation found intravenous lines had been connected improperly, in part because of the ‘‘extra stress’’ from the scheduling of two executions the same day.
That execution led the Supreme Court to review and ultimately uphold Oklahoma’s use of midazolam, the same sedative that Arkansas plans to use next week as part of a three-drug protocol. Texas uses a single drug, pentobarbital, in its lethal injections. that could executions
Executions of multiple inmates are not new to Arkansas. It has twice executed three inmates on the same day — in August 1994 and January 1997. And it put two inmates to death the same day both in May 1994 and September 1999. Arkansas officials in the past defended the multiple executions as reducing stress and saving overtime costs for corrections personnel.
But more recently, capital punishment has been stalled in Arkansas because of drug shortages and legal challenges. The last execution in the state was in 2005.
Asked about the potential for difficulties if Arkansas were to carry out back-to-back executions, criminal justice professor Robert Lytle said, ‘‘If I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t know.’’
Lytle, who teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said so much attention has been given to the unprecedented timetable.
‘‘I’ve got to think everybody is dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s,’’ he said. ‘‘I can see some logistical issues creating some difficulties but I’m sure if that’s all it is, I can see the Department of Correction will adapt however they need to.’’
There was a time when executing more than one prisoner on a single day was common — records show at least seven states carried out multiple single-day executions in 1951.
Virginia electrocuted four inmates February 2, 1951, and three more three days later. The men — all black and known historically as the Martinsville Seven — were all convicted of raping a white woman at a time when rape was a capital offence.
That same year in New York, a couple known as the Lonely Hearts Killers were electrocuted back to back March 7, 1951. Two more prisoners were put to death the next day in the same electric chair.
In Texas, records show multiple executions 28 times starting in 1924 when the state took over execution duties from counties and electrocution became the capital punishment method. For its inauguration on February 8, 1924, the new electric chair was used five times.
But since the 1976 Supreme Court decision allowing the death penalty to resume, multiple executions have been rare.
The pair of lethal injections that Willett, the former Texas warden, presided over in 2000 was the last of 10 such executions over six years involving only four states: Texas, Arkansas, Illinois and South Carolina.
Willett, who oversaw 89 executions before he retired in 2001 after 30 years with the prison system, said his tenure also included a series of seven lethal injections over 15 days in January 2000, a run similar to Arkansas’ planned executions.
‘‘I do remember it seemed to kind of drain me near the end of that January bunch,’’ he said. ‘‘I just seemed to be emotionally drained.’’
It has been an interesting week to fly the friendly skies. The Federal Communications Commission mercifully withdrew a 2013 proposal to allow passenger phone calls on US flights.
Imagine being stuffed in a flying sardine can alongside a stranger on the phone with his mostly-deaf aunty. It defies belief that anyone thought this was a good idea. Mercifully, the FCC came to its senses. Obtaining a modicum of peace and quiet at 30,000 feet (over the dull roar of jet engines) is still an achievable life goal here in the States. Unless you travel with a toddler, of course.
It wasn’t such a great week for peace and quiet on the tarmac, however. United Airlines stock dropped a billion dollars after police dragged a passenger off a plane at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Dr David Dao had refused to ‘‘volunteer’’ his seat to make room for United staff travelling to Louisville, Kentucky. Dao suffered a concussion, broken nose, and lost two front teeth.
United’s CEO Oscar Munoz first described the incident as a ‘‘reaccommodation’’. Two days and a tsunami of angry reactions later, Munoz rephrased – to ‘‘truly horrific’’. It was quite possibly the worst public relations disaster since Philip Morris spun smokers’ early deaths as a benefit to governments trying to cut healthcare, housing and pension costs for the elderly.
Oscar Munoz became United’s CEO in 2015. His predecessor, Jeff Smisek, resigned abruptly in the midst of a FBI investigation. Allegedly Smisek and David Samson, chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, had dinner one night to discuss United’s lease at Newark Airport. Smisek, who oversaw all air and sea ports in New Jersey, suggested that United might be accommodated if it found a way for him to more easily get to his holiday house for weekends.
Miraculously, after that dinner, United re-established an otherwise money-losing ‘‘Chairman’s Flight’’ which got Samson (and presumably others) down to Columbia, South Carolina on Thursdays and back to New Jersey on Mondays. Conveniently, the Port Authority handed over a $10 million grant to improve United’s Newark facilities and approved a new hangar. The bribe didn’t do the rest of us much good. I flew into Newark a month ago. After 20 hours of flying and transit from New Zealand (with toddler in tow), Newark’s tired carpet and 80s formica didn’t make for a particularly warm welcome.
Samson worked for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The governor weighed in on the United passenger scandal across US media this week, blasting United’s ‘‘awful’’ service out of Newark. The irony here is that the Chairman’s Flight bribe was only discovered because the FBI was investigating Christie. In a scandal known as ‘‘Bridgegate,’’ two Christie aides caused a massive traffic shut-down on a bridge between New York and New Jersey. They did so because the mayor of the town on the New Jersey side of the bridge refused to support Christie’s 2013 re-election. They got jail time, Christie was never charged. The United scam was discovered accidentally, as FBI agents pored over Port Authority emails and records.
As for this week’s United scandal, the passenger has lawyered up. He will likely recoup hundreds of times the amount he might have otherwise received if United had offered him a bit more cash for his seat.
Speaking of airline seats, my next trip at 30,000 feet will be to London in July. I will be sans toddler, and I won’t be able to phone her in-flight in violation of my fellow sardines’ peace and quiet. I also won’t be flying United.