Two more Arkansas executions in doubt
Gov. Hutchinson frustrated by last-minute rulings
The Arkansas Supreme Court has denied one of its death-row inmates appeals for a stay of execution, but the prisoner was still unlikely to be executed Thursday as scheduled because of other legal rulings blocking the use of one of the three drugs used in the state’s execution protocol.
The last-minute wrangling has frustrated Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s accelerated effort to put eight inmates to death before the end of April, when one of its lethal injection drugs expires. The first two executions were canceled because of court decisions. Legal rulings have put the others in doubt.
As of Thursday, the original list has been narrowed, including Stacey Johnson, 47, and Ledell Lee, 51, who were scheduled to be executed Thursday.
Arkansas originally set the executions over an 11-day period in April, which would have been the most by a state in such a short period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
The legal delays have stymied the governor’s aggressive timetable.
“When I set the dates, I knew there could be delays in one or more of the cases, but I expected the courts to allow the juries’ sentences to be carried out since each case had been reviewed multiple times by the Arkansas Supreme Court, which affirmed the guilt of each,” Hutchinson said in a statement.
Lee was denied a stay Thursday in his bid to allow time for new DNA tests on evidence connected with his case. He was sentenced to death for robbing and strangling Debra Reese, 26, who was also beaten 36 times by a tire iron in her home in 1993.
Johnson, who was also scheduled to die Thursday, has likewise sought new DNA testing. He was sentenced to death for the 1993 killing of Carol Heath, 25. Both inmates are represented in their appeals by the Innocence Project and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Johnson and Lee remain, at least for now, covered by the temporary restraining order issued Wednesday by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray who blocked the state from using the drug vecuronium bromide as part of its three-drug lethal execution cocktail. McKesson Corp., which produces the drug, has argued it sold Arkansas the drug for medical use, not executions and would suffer harm financially and to its reputation if the executions were carried out. It claims the state misled the company about how it planned to use the drug.
A similar stay was overturned by a state appeals court last week. The current ruling has also been appealed by the state.