Arkansas stages double execution

State rushing to carry out sentences before drug expires

The southern state of Arkansas, rushing to execute several inmates before a lethal drug expires next week, put to death two inmates late Monday, the first double execution in the US in 17 years.

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said that Jack Jones and Marcel Williams, both sentenced to death in the 1990s, were executed by lethal injection after higher courts rejected their final legal appeals.

Arkansas had planned to put eight convicted murderers to death in 11 days – a record, had it been carried out – but four have won reprieves.

Jones, 52, was executed after the US Supreme Court rejected an 11th- hour request from his attorneys asking justices to reconsider a procedural issue from his trial.

Williams, 46, died hours later after his appeals were exhausted. His lawyers had filed a flurry of last- minute challenges, including accusations that the state had improperly carried out Jones’ execution just minutes earlier.

“Mr Jones was moving his lips and gulping for air” after the midazolam was administered, evidence that the drug did not properly sedate him, the lawyers said in a legal filing.

But attorneys for Arkansas said the accusation was not supported by media or witness accounts, and charges that the execution “appeared to be tortuous and inhumane are utterly baseless.”

Williams’ legal team had earlier argued that his extreme obesity – Williams weighed 180 kilograms – would make it difficult to find a proper vein for the lethal injection.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has said the accelerated execution timetable was necessary as the state’s stock of a sedative used in lethal injec- tions will expire at the end of the month.

The execution process began at 7: 06 pm and Jones was pronounced dead at 7: 20 pm, Department of Correction spokesperson Solomon Graves said.

Jones was calm as he made a rambling final statement while strapped to the gurney, saying he tried to become a better person and apologizing to Lacey, a daughter of his victim, 34- yearold Mary Phillips, the paper said, citing media witnesses in the death chamber.