With new supply of lethal drug, Arkansas set for next execution

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas has a new supply of a controversial lethal injection drug months after the state put four men to death over an eightday period, officials said Thursday, as the state prepared to set an execution date for an inmate.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s office said he planned to schedule an execution for Jack Greene after a request from Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. Greene was convicted in the 1991 killing of Sidney Jethro Burnett after Burnett and his wife accused Greene of arson. He has exhausted his appeals and there’s no stay of execution in place, Rutledge told the governor in her request.

Hutchinson spokesman J.R. Davis said he doesn’t have a timeline yet for scheduling Greene’s execution.

Arkansas executed four prisoners in April but had intended to put eight men to death. The state scheduled the executions to occur before its supply of midazolam, a sedative used in its three-drug lethal injection process, expired. A spokesman said the state obtained the new supply Aug. 4 and it expires in January 2019. A state law keeps the source of the state’s execution drugs secret.

Documents released by the Department of Correction show the state paid $250 in cash for 40 vials of midazolam. Based on the state’s lethal injection protocol, the supply appears to be enough midazolam for two executions.

Greene’s attorneys argue that he is severely mentally ill, saying he suffers from a fixed delusion that prison officials are conspiring with his attorneys to cover up injuries he believes corrections officers have inflicted on him.