I’m sorry, says fourth Arkansas inmate executed in eight days
THE US state of Arkansas executed a fourth inmate in eight days as it raced to use a batch of lethal injection drugs before they expire on Sunday.
Kenneth Williams was pronounced dead at 11.05pm local time, 13 minutes after the execution began at the Cummins Unit prison at Varner.
Williams, 38, lurched and convulsed 20 times during the lethal injection. A prison spokesman said he shook for approximately 10 seconds about three minutes into the procedure.
Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over 11 days as more pharmaceutical firms refuse to supply their drugs for lethal purposes. That would have been the most in such a short period since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, but courts issued stays for four of the inmates.
Williams was sentenced to death for killing a former deputy warden, Cecil Boren, after he escaped from prison in 1999. He was already serving life for the murder of a college cheerleader.
In a statement which he read from the death chamber, Williams said: “I extend my sincerest of apologies to the families I have senselessly wronged and deprived of their loved ones... I was more than wrong. The crimes I perpetrated against you all was senseless, extremely hurtful and inexcusable.”
After the execution, Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson claimed that “the long path of justice ended tonight”.