Concern as Arkansas to execute two killers

Two condemned Arkansas killers who admitted they were guilty but feared their poor health could lead to extreme pain during lethal injections set for yesterday were expected to become the first inmates put to death in a double execution in the US in more than 16 years.

Jack Jones and Marcel Williams were set to die in what would be the second and third executions in Arkansas this month.

The state set an aggressive plan to execute several inmates before one of its lethal injection drugs expires at the end of April.

The state executed Ledell Lee last week in the state’s first use of capital punishment since 2005.

Governor Asa Hutchinson originally scheduled four double executions over an 11day period in April.

Expiration of drugs

The eight executions would have been the most by a state in such a short period since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The state said the executions needed to be carried out before its supply of the sedative midazolam expires on April 30.

Courts have blocked four of the eight scheduled executions. The last state to put more than one inmate to death on the same day was Texas, which executed two killers in August 2000.

Williams was sent to death row for the 1994 rape and killing of 22-year-old Stacy Errickson, whom he kidnapped from a gas station in central Arkansas.

Authorities said Williams abducted and raped two other women in the days before he was arrested in Errickson’s death. Williams admitted responsibility to the state Parole Board last month.

“I wish I could take it back, but I can’t,” Williams told the board.

Jones was given the death penalty for the 1995 rape and killing of Mary Phillips. He strangled her with the cord to a coffee pot.