Execution should require certainty

We, the people of the state of Arkansas, collectively killed a man on Thursday. Unlike at least half of the eight Arkansas inmates scheduled for execution over an 11-day period, Ledell Lee got no final reprieve.

He died by lethal injection minutes before his death warrant was to expire at midnight, despite 11th-hour efforts to stop his execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday denied a stay request that had been filed on behalf of all eight inmates, challenging the state’s plan to execute them before one of the drugs used in lethal injection expires. The state’s supply of midazolam will expire at month’s end.

The state attorney general and attorneys for the condemned inmates, collectively or individually, have argued several issues from one end of the state and federal courts system to the other. The U.S. Supreme Court has the final say, assuming appeals from one side or the other continue to that level.

Significantly, the Arkansas Supreme Court had earlier in the day also vacated a Pulaski County Circuit Court order barring the state’s use of another drug in the state’s deadly threedrug cocktail. Circuit Judge Alice Gray had barred use of vecuronium bromide at the behest of the drug’s distributor, McKesson.

Time for appeal finally ran out for Lee. Ultimately, others among those death-row inmates may be executed.

Three more men are scheduled for execution in Arkansas this week, two on Monday and a third on Friday.

A fourth, who was supposed to die on Friday, won a temporary stay.

The legal wrangling over how the state of Arkansas carries out the death penalty and individual appeals for the others will, of course, continue as people here and around the world contemplate this state’s first execution in almost a dozen years.

Lee had been convicted decades ago for the brutal 1993 murder of a 26-year-old Jacksonville woman, Debra Reese. He was accused of bludgeoning Reese with a tire tool, striking her 37 times, after he invaded her home.

Lee maintained his innocence. His last-minute appeals included one for fresh DNA tests of evidence brought in his trial. His attorneys also raised claims of intellectual defect and ineffective counsel.

All of these are common appeals in death-penalty cases. None of them worked for Lee, who was also serving time for two separate rape convictions. And, he had been previously charged with the 1992 slaying of another woman. Prosecutors stopped pursuing a retrial of the case after Lee received the death sentence for killing Reese.

A second inmate, Stacey Johnson, had also been scheduled to die Thursday for a different 1993 murder. He, too, was convicted decades ago. A jury found him guilty of killing Carol Heath of De Queen, who was beaten, strangled and had her throat slit while her two children hid in a closet.

Johnson’s execution was stayed to allow him to argue for new DNA tests of evidence collected at the crime scene. He maintains his innocence.

Both of these men were convicted of horrible crimes. Their prosecutors, their juries, local judges who oversaw their trials and, ultimately, the governor of this state believed them guilty. Those public servants sought, delivered, imposed or ordered the executions.

The state attorney general has defended the state’s actions and all these courts have reviewed these cases.

The process has been gut-wrenching for the surviving families of the murder victims and for some, if not all, of the people in that chain of decision-makers.

But keep this in mind: The authority exercised by every last one of the public servants comes from either the state of Arkansas or the United States, meaning us — we, the people.

So, consider the admonition from one of the attorneys from the Innocence Project, which has been defending these inmates and has used DNA evidence to exonerate 182 people.

Nina Morrison, a senior staff attorney, specifically criticized Arkansas’ “rush” to execute inmates because its drug supply is expiring.

“While reasonable people can disagree on whether death is an appropriate form of punishment, no one should be executed when there is a possibility that person is innocent,” she said.

No matter how slim that possibility might be, it is difficult to argue otherwise.

Capital punishment remains popular with many in this state and elsewhere. But maybe the conversation sparked by the immediacy of these executions in Arkansas will at least foster some better effort to eliminate the chance that an innocent person is executed by our collective hand.