Legal challenges halt executions of 8 on Death Row
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas’ already compromised plan to execute eight men by the end of the month fell apart further Friday, with a judge blocking the use of a lethal injection drug and the state’s highest court granting a stay to one of the first inmates who had been scheduled to die.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen issued a temporary restraining order blocking the state from using its supply of vecuronium bromide after a company said it had sold the drug to the state for medical purposes, not capital punishment. Griffen scheduled a hearing Tuesday, the day after the first execution was scheduled.
Griffen’s order effectively halts the executions, which had dropped to six after Friday’s state Supreme Court order blocking one execution and a federal judge halting another last week, unless it’s reversed or the state finds a new supply of the drug.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s said she planned to file an emergency request with the state Supreme Court to vacate the order, saying Griffen shouldn’t handle the case.
The order came the same day justices issued a stay for Bruce Ward, who was scheduled to be put to death on Monday night for the 1989 death of a woman found strangled in the men’s room of the Little Rock convenience store where she worked. Ward’s attorneys have argued he is a diagnosed schizophrenic with no rational understanding of his impending execution.
U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker is also considering the inmates’ arguments that such a compressed schedule could lead to undue pain and suffering. Baker had not ruled by Friday evening. Arkansas scheduled the executions to take place before its supply of midazolam expires at the end of the month.
McKesson said it had requested Arkansas return its supply of vecuronium bromide after the San Francisco company learned it would be used in executions. The firm said Thursday night the state had assured that the drug would be returned, but it wasn’t.
Under Arkansas’ protocol, midazolam is used to sedate the inmate, vecuronium bromide then stops the inmate’s breathing and potassium chloride stops the heart.
Baker is also considering a request from two pharmaceutical companies that their products not be used for capital punishment. Fresenius Kabi USA and West-Ward Pharmaceuticals Corp. filed a court brief Thursday asking the court to prohibit Arkansas from using their drugs.
Arkansas, which has not executed an inmate since 2005, had initially planned to execute eight before the end of April, when its supply of midazolam expires. The plan, if carried out, would have marked the most inmates executed by a state in such a short period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.