DEATH AT THE DOUBLE US bumps off two killers at once as mass execution begins
DEAD: Jack Jones TWO inmates received lethal injections three hours apart as Arkansas completed the first double execution in the US since 2000.
The first inmate, Jack Jones, was executed on schedule, shortly after 7pm local time on Monday.
But lawyers for the second, Marcel Williams, convinced a judge minutes later to briefly delay his punishment over concerns about how the earlier one was carried out.
They claimed Jones gasped for air, an account the state’s attorney general denied, but the judge lifted her stay about an hour later and Williams was pronounced dead at 10.33pm local time. after the drug midazolam was administered, and officials put a tongue depressor in his mouth intermittently for the first few minutes.
His chest stopped moving two minutes after they checked for consciousness, and he was pronounced dead at 7.20pm.
Initially, Governor Asa Hutchinson scheduled four double executions over an 11-day period in April.
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 back in 1976.
The state said the executions needed to be carried out before its supply of one lethal injection drug expires on April 30.
Besides the two executions this week, Arkansas put to death one other inmate last week and has a final one scheduled for tomorrow.
Before last week, Arkansas had not had an execution since 2005 – or a double execution since 1999.
Jones was sent to death row for the 1995 rape and killing of Mary Phillips.
He was also convicted of attempting to kill Ms Phillips’s daughter Lacy, and was convicted of another rape and killing in Florida.
Williams was sentenced to death for the 1994 rape and killing of 22-year-old Stacy Errickson, whom he kidnapped from a petrol station in Arkansas.
The authorities said Williams abducted and raped two other women in the days before that.
Nine people have been executed in the US this year – four in Texas, three in Arkansas and one each in Missouri and Virginia. VICTIM: Mary Phillips and her daughter Lacy KILLED: Marcel Williams REALITY beauty Lisa Appleton let it all hang out as she burst out of her bikini top and treated onlookers to a topless sea splash!
Lisa, 48, is hellbent on reviving her TV career and her boob-flash tease may have earned her even more stripes.
The former Big Brother babe is enjoying a beach break on the coast of Spain and she made quite a splash in the pool.
She wore a bright two piece for her raunchy frolic but her huge assets soon burst out of the tiny top.
As she jumped around and frolicked in the pool, her string bikini top tried – and failed – to keep her ample curves under wraps.
Her sweater-stretchers escaped from her swimsuit when she energetically jumped up and down.
Brunette beauty Lisa’s top then slipped down her chest and left her totally exposed!
Lisa is hotly-tipped to make a shock return to the Big Brother house when it returns to Channel 5 later this year.
One excited fan said: “I love Lisa – she always looks so happy, like she’s having a great time!”