Arkansas goes on execution spree
TWO INMATES DIE WITHIN HOURS
The southern state of Arkansas, rushing to execute several inmates before a lethal drug expires next week, put to death two inmates on Monday, the first double execution in the United States in 17 years.
Arkansas attorney-general Leslie Rutledge said Jack Jones and Marcel Williams, both sentenced to death in the 1990s, were executed after higher courts rejected their final legal appeals.
Arkansas had planned to put eight convicted murderers to death in 11 days – a record, had it been carried out – but four have won reprieves.
Jones, 52, was executed after the US Supreme Court rejected an 11th-hour request from his attorneys, asking justices to reconsider a procedural issue from his trial.
Williams, 46, died hours later after his appeals were exhausted. His lawyers had filed a flurry of last-minute challenges, including accusations that the state had improperly carried out Jones’ execution just minutes earlier.
“Mr Jones was moving his lips and gulping for air” after the midazolam was administered, evidence that the drug did not properly sedate him, the lawyers said.
But attorneys for Arkansas said the accusation was not supported by media or witness accounts and charges were utterly baseless.
Williams’ legal team had earlier argued that his extreme obesity – Williams weighed 180kg – would make it difficult to find a proper vein for the lethal injection.
Governor Asa Hutchinson said the accelerated timetable was necessary as the stock of a sedative used in lethal injections would expire at the end of the month.
Rutledge said in separate statements that the family and friends of the victims had “seen justice carried out”. In each case, Rutledge described the crimes they committed in gruesome detail.
Jones was pronounced dead at 7.20pm, department of correction spokesperson Solomon Graves said.
Jones was calm as he made a rambling final statement while strapped to the gurney, saying he tried to become a better person and apologising to Lacey, a daughter of his victim, Mary Phillips, 34.
Last Thursday, Ledell Lee was put to death in the state’s first execution in more than a decade.
The last US state to execute two convicts in one night was Texas, in August 2000. – AFP