Courts lift obstacles Arkansas faces in its plan to execute eight inmates before the end of the month, but the first executions are in limbo.

VARNER, Ark. — State and federal courts lifted the two primary obstacles Arkansas faced in its plan to execute eight inmates before the end of April, but the state backed away from legal efforts to carry out one of the first two lethal injections that had been scheduled Monday night.

The decisions from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the state Supreme Court were among a flurry of legal actions over the series of planned lethal injections that, if carried out, would mark the most inmates put to death by a state in such a short period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

The rulings left the state fighting against the clock to execute convicted killer Don Davis before his death warrant was expected to expire at midnight. Davis and Bruce Ward were set to be executed Monday night and had been granted stays by the state Supreme Court, but Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said she wouldn’t appeal Ward’s stay at this time.

The state scheduled the executions to occur before its supply of midazolam expires at the end of the month, and Arkansas has not found a new supplier of the lethal injection drug.

“Allowing (Davis’) stay to stand will effectively prevent Arkansas from seeing justice done,” Rutledge said in a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Separately, a federal appeals court overturned U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker’s decision to halt the executions over the use of midazolam, which has been used in flawed executions in other states, but the Arkansas Supreme Court’s stays remain in place.

A little over an hour later, the state Supreme Court lifted a judge’s ruling that had effectively blocked the executions by prohibiting the state from using its supply of vecuronium bromide, one of the other lethal injection drugs. A medical supply company said it was misled by the state and that the drug was sold for medical purposes, not executions.

The state Supreme Court voted 4-3 to grant stays for Davis and Ward. The inmates wanted stays of execution while the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a separate case concerning access to independent mental health experts by defendants. The U.S. high court is set to hold oral arguments on April 24.

The inmates’ attorneys argued that their clients were denied access to independent mental health experts, saying Ward has a lifelong history of severe mental illness and that Davis has an IQ in the range of intellectual disability.

The Arkansas high court already had issued one stay for Ward. Ward’s attorneys have argued he is a diagnosed schizophrenic with no rational understanding of his impending execution.

Meanwhile, the Arkansas Supreme Court also barred a state judge who blocked the multiple execution plan from taking up any death-penalty-related cases after he participated in a protest where he appeared to mimic a death row inmate about to receive a lethal injection. Justices reassigned any death penalty cases from Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Wendell Griffen, who banned the state from using the vecuronium bromide obtained.