UN ‘deeply troubled’ by Arkansas executions

The UN human rights office has said it is “deeply troubled” by four executions over eight days in Arkansas under an accelerated timetable based on the looming expiry of a sedative used in the procedure.

Spokeswoman Liz Throssell stopped short of condemning the move but said: “Rushing executions can deny prisoners the opportunity to fully exercise their right to appeal against their conviction and or sentence.”

Ms Throssell said use of the sedative midazolam “has been criticised for failing to prevent people from suffering pain”.

She said the rights office welcomed the stay of execution in four other cases in Arkansas, and pointed to a “welcome and steady decline” in executions in the US in recent years. The intervention came after Kenneth Williams, 38, was pronounced dead at 11.05pm local time, 13 minutes after his execution began at the Cummins Unit prison at Varner, Arkansas.

A reporter who witnessed the execution said Williams lurched and convulsed 20 times during the lethal injection. A prison spokesman said he shook for approximately 10 seconds, about three minutes into the procedure.

Arkansas had scheduled eight executions over an 11day period before the drug expires tomorrow. That would have been the most in such a compressed period since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, but courts issued stays for four of the inmates.

The four lethal injections which were carried out included Monday’s first double execution in the US since 2000. Williams apologised to the families he had “senselessly wronged” before his execution.

He had killed a former warden after he escaped from prison in 1999. At the time, he was three weeks into a life term for the death of a college cheerleader.

Kenneth Williams