Arkansas execution protests less in streets, more in tweets

LITTLE ROCK (AP) — While outrage on social media is growing over Arkansas' unprecedented plan to put seven inmates to death before the end of the month, the protests have been more muted within the conservative Southern state where capital punishment is still favored by a majority of residents.

A few dozen people regularly have kept vigil outside Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson's mansion for weeks, holding signs that say "Thou Shalt Not Kill" and "End the Death Penalty." And the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty hopes to draw hundreds of participants to a Good Friday rally at the state Capitol to protest the executions that start Monday — three nights of double executions, followed by a single one. A judge last week halted a planned eighth execution.

"Arkansas is known across the world for the Little Rock Nine and all of that atrocity," said the coalition's execution director, Furonda Brasfield, referring to the 1957 desegregation battle in Little Rock involving nine black students. "And now it's the Little Rock eight in 10, and it paints our state in such a horrible light."

The group is using the hashtag #8in10 to highlight the executions, although the seven lethal injections are scheduled to take place over 11 days, the first on April 17 and the last on April 27. Hutchinson set the unprecedented schedule because a key lethal injection drug expires April 30.

Among the most vocal critics of the plan is Damien Echols, who spent nearly 18 years on Arkansas' death row before he and two others were freed in 2011 as part of a plea deal in which they maintained their innocence. Echols, who now lives in New York, plans to attend Friday's rally along with Jason Baldwin, who also was convicted then freed in the 1993 killings of three boys in West Memphis.