In Ark., 7 executions in 11 days
Supporters of state’s move say it’s justice, foes decry ‘assembly line of death’
GOULD, Ark. — Patricia Washington sees a simple calculus: If you take someone’s life, you’d better be prepared to lose your own.
The death penalty is just, she believes — an unsurprising view in this rural town a short drive from the state prison that houses death row. Executions have come up a lot lately in conversations at Washington’s work, a tiny eatery tucked into an Exxon service station off Highway 65.
As she carried trays brimming with chicken tenders and fried okra one recent morning, she reflected on some of her regulars — the prison guards.
“There’s a lot on their mind. You can see it in their eyes,” Washington said.
Starting the day after Easter, the state is scheduled to execute seven men in 11 days, and people across Arkansas are wondering how so many executions will affect prison staffers and color perceptions of this Bible Belt state. The men are scheduled to die on April 17, 20, 24 and 27.
No state has executed this many people in such a short span since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. The closest was Texas, which executed eight men in May and June of 1997, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.
Arkansas hasn’t put anyone to death since 2005. That year, Eric Nance, 45, was pronounced dead on Nov. 28 at the Cummins Unit just outside Gould. Since then, court challenges and difficulties in obtaining lethal injection drugs have stopped the killings.
But now the state’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, says Arkansas must act before its supply of midazolam, an anesthetic used in the lethal injection cocktail, expires at the end of the month.
Eight executions were originally scheduled but a judge Thursday blocked one because the state’s parole board said it would recommend commuting that inmate’s sentence to life in prison without parole, a process that will extend beyond the drug expiration date.
Hutchinson set the execution dates in February after state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge informed him that the condemned — four black, three white, and all convicted of murders between 1989 and 1999 — had exhausted their legal challenges. In all, they killed 11 people.
“This action is necessary to fulfill the requirement of the law,” Hutchinson said in an email. “It is also important to bring closure to the victims’ families.”
Walk around Gould and it’s easy to find someone who has an opinion on the executions. The presence of two prisons, the Cummins Unit and Varner Unit, is inescapable even if the main features north of town are towering grain silos and freshly tilled fields.
But off in the distance, one can see the glistening barbed wire of Cummins and Varner, which together can house nearly 3,500 inmates.
On a recent muggy afternoon, Mayor Essie Mae Cableton sat behind her desk at City Hall.
Cableton worked as a guard for the Department of Correction for nearly two decades — 10 of those years at Cummins, which houses the execution chamber. She recalled walking the prison grounds on the days of past executions. It felt, in some ways, like business as usual.
But this time feels different. “It’s too many at one time,” Cableton said. “Now, I’m not saying that they’re not some bad individuals. But it’s just too many at one time.”
Death penalty opponents say conducting so many executions in 11 days increases the likelihood of mistakes that could cause needless suffering. They also object to the use of midazolam, which they say has contributed to some botched executions.
Hutchinson and Wendy Kelley, the director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, have not expressed any concerns about possible mishaps during the executions.
That’s little comfort to critics.
“This is just a ghastly assembly line of death,” said Rita Sklar, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas.
Last month, nearly two dozen former corrections officers from around the country sent a letter to Hutchinson, urging him to consider the “strain and stress” the executions will place on corrections staff.
Arkansas law also requires that at least six citizens who don’t know the victim or the condemned witness each execution. A corrections spokesman said efforts to find witnesses for the upcoming executions are continuing.
Back at the Exxon station, Washington’s co-worker, Betty Petty, thought about how she’d answer if asked to volunteer to sit in on the executions.
“I’d consider it,” said Petty. “Justice is justice. I think this is justice.”
Washington wondered whether she was serious.
“Would you, for real?” she asked.
“I would consider it,” Petty said with a nod. “I would.”
Nationwide, support for the death penalty has steadily declined in recent years from its peak of about 80 percent support in 1994. A Pew Research Center poll last September found that 49 percent of Americans favored the death penalty for murderers, while 42 percent opposed it. (Blacks tend to oppose the death penalty at higher rates than do whites.)
By comparison, a University of Arkansas survey of voters in 2015 found that 71 percent of Arkansans supported the death penalty, while 19 percent opposed it.
The men scheduled to die this month — among the 34 on death row in Arkansas — are Don Davis, Stacey Johnson, Jack Jones, Ledell Lee, Bruce Ward, Kenneth Williams and Marcel Williams.
The story of Kenneth Williams resonates strongly here in Lincoln County in the southeast part of the state. Shortly after getting sentenced to life inside Cummins Unit for killing a college cheerleader in 1998, Williams escaped.
It was a Sunday and Cecil Boren was tending his yard on a farm about two miles from Cummins where he and his wife, Genie, lived. She wasn’t home when Williams broke in, stole Cecil’s guns and shot him to death before driving off in his truck.
Genie Boren still lives on the farm.
“We’ve been ready a long time,” she said. “If this doesn’t happen now, who knows, I may be dead without seeing justice.”
She plans to attend Williams’ execution on April 27.