Executions To Resume In Arkansas Prisons

HUTCHINSON, RUTLEDGE POISED TO CARRY OUT DEATH SENTENCES IN STATE

After more than eight years, the state of Arkansas will soon kill a killer.

It is just a matter of time and a few minor legal hurdles to jump over as a recent U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 ruling has started the wheels of state sponsored death rolling again in Arkansas.

While the Arkansas executions, at least for now, will remain on hold, the state seeks to find the drugs it wants to use, develops a new procedure to carry out death sentences and addresses pending lawsuits, officials said recently.

So, soon Arkansas will start up that age-old process of killing the killers.

Former Gov. Mike Beebe, even after an eight-year term of office, who actively, publicly disdained the death penalty, did not do all he could to stop the process.

The last Arkansas Governor who disdained the death penalty and who did something about it was a Republican – Winthrop Rockefeller.

One of his last acts in office was to commute all the deathrow inmates who were awaiting a seat in the state’s electric chair to life in prison without parole.

Rockefeller did not believe in the death penalty.

We know now he was indeed a rare type of Republican.

Perhaps we need more of those types of Republicans today — at least in Arkansas.

It seems on the heels of last week’s U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 ruling in an Oklahoma case, that the drug midazolam can be used in executions without violating the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

Arkansas has never used that drug.

But the state seems poised to do so in new guidelines apparently being drafted by the Department of Corrections.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson has directed the state Department of Correction to begin a search for the appropriate drugs.

“I’m ready to do my responsibility,” Hutchinson said.

So he will sign those execution orders when brought before him. But we already knew that. We also know that Attorney General Leslie Rutledge will also be urging the Department of Corrections to clear the way for the state’s first execution in almost a decade.

Currently, state executions are on hold because of pending litigation challenging the state’s lethal-injection law. There are also problems with the Correction Department having not finished a new protocol to carry out the death sentences.

But soon, the state of Arkansas will again kill a killer.

Lawmakers back last April passed Act 1096, which allows the state to use either a barbiturate or the drug midazolam, followed by two other drugs, to put inmates to death.

Arkansas has not put anyone to death since 2005 because of legal challenges to the state’s death-penalty procedures. For the record the last execution — Eric Nance, convicted of murdering 18-year-old Julie Heath of Malvern in 1993 — was carried out in November 2005 by using a three-drug cocktail of phenobarbital, a paralytic agent and potassium chloride.

Today, there are 33 inmates on death row in Arkansas.

Eight inmates have exhausted all appeals and are subject to immediate execution.

The only thing standing in the way for an execution is the DOC must first create an execution protocol based on the new law, officials have said. It won’t be long. Especially if newly elected Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has her druthers.

In a statement last week, Rutledge said: “The Attorney General’s Office continues to handle ongoing litigation concerning Arkansas’ lethal injection statute, and I am confident the State will prevail in the end, allowing executions to resume.”

The state of Arkansas will soon be back to killing the killers. MAYLON RICE, AN AWARDWINNING COLUMNIST, HAS WRITTEN BOTH NEWS AND COLUMNS FOR SEVERAL NWA PUBLICATIONS AND HAS BEEN WRITING FOR THE ENTERPRISELEADER FOR SEVERAL YEARS.