Ark. executes inmate, plans 3 more this month
Officials rush to beat one drug’s expiration date.
The death of Ledell Lee, 51, came amid furor over state wish to carry out sentences before drug expires.
After days of delays, Arkansas has executed a death row inmate, and says it plans to carry out three more executions before the end of the month.
Arkansas has been the center of a frenzied battle over the death penalty since authorities there announced plans to execute eight inmates during an 11-day span ending next Thursday. Court orders have halted four of those scheduled lethal injections so far, preventing what would have been a pace of executions unmatched in modern American history. Officials said they chose the time frame because one of their lethal-injection drugs will expire at the end of April.
Late Thursday night, Arkansas executed Ledell Lee, 51, who was sentenced to death in 1995 for killing Debra Reese. She was fatally beaten in her home two years earlier. Lee had long denied involvement in her death, and he filed court documents seeking DNA testing to prove his innocence.
Lee was pronounced dead four minutes before the midnight expiration of the death warrant issues in his case.
The lethal injection was pushed late into the night by a volley of petitions Lee’s lawyers filed in a federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court denied requests from Lee and several other death-row inmates and then rejected Lee’s late appeals, allowing the execution to proceed.
The 5-4 decision marked the first known vote of consequence for new Justice Neil Gorsuch, who joined the body this month and sided with conservatives in rejecting the request.
None of the justices who denied the stay request explained their decision. Justice Stephen Breyer, who has previously described the death penalty as “capricious, random, indeed, arbitrary,” issued a dissent, focusing on Arkansas’ stated desire to carry out executions before the expiration date for midazolam, a sedative used in some lethal injections.
“I have previously noted the arbitrariness with which executions are carried out in this country,” he wrote. “And I have pointed out how the arbitrary nature of the death penalty system, as presently administered, runs contrary to the very purpose of a ‘rule of law.’ ”
Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who set the dates, has defended the timetable as necessary to carry out lawful executions before the drug expires. Death row inmates and their attorneys have criticized the pace and the state’s execution method, while former corrections officials cautioned that the rushed schedule heightens the risk of a botched lethal injection.