"I'm glad that chapter is closed", she said Monday night. A court official informally known as the death clerk keeps everyone up to date and communicates often with lawyers for inmates and the states as the date of execution nears.
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.
Williams attorneys argued that several key steps in the first inmate's execution were botched, including a lengthy and unsuccessful attempt to place a central line in the man's neck. It argued that Williams, who weighs 400 pounds, could face a "torturous" death because of his weight.
Williams was declared dead at 10:33 p.m., 17 minutes after the chemicals were released into his body. He was not brought back into the chamber until the stay was lifted.
Arkansas made history as the first USA state since 2000 to carry out multiple executions on a single day. It is the first double execution for the state since 1999.
States with the death penalty have struggled to obtain enough lethal injection drugs, including midazolam, as manufacturers and distributors have increasingly refused to provide supplies for capital punishment.
In recent pleas to state and federal courts, the two inmates said the three drug cocktail Arkansas uses could have been ineffective due to their poor health.
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By the time an execution takes place or is stopped, four or more different courts are supposed to have examined the entire case, including the trial record, outstanding legal issues, assertions of innocence and claims of constitutional violations or newly discovered evidence.
Earlier Jones had argued his health conditions could lead to a painful death.
Shortly before the lethal injections were administered, Jones read out a lengthy statement in which he said: "I'm so sorry Lacey". Jones told her: "I hope over time you can learn who I really am and I am not a monster". The state now turns off the mic after an inmate's final statement. She was strangled to death with a coffee pot cord while daughter Lacey was tied to a chair.
In 1996, Jones was convicted and sentenced to death for the June 6, 1995, rape and murder of Mary Phillips. There were reports that Jones' execution may have had complications.
Jones, his appeals exhausted and his execution cleared by the Supreme Court "had been pushed into the death chamber in a wheelchair having had one leg amputated as a result of diabetes", according to the Guardian.
The appeals court declined Jones' request for a stay based on his claim that the state's new lethal injection protocol will inflict cruel and unusual punishment. Jones had three pieces of fried chicken, potato logs with tartar sauce, three Butterfingers, a chocolate milkshake, and fruit punch. Williams had fried chicken, banana pudding, nachos, two sodas and potato logs with ketchup, Graves said. The average time between sentencing and execution for prisoners executed in 2013 topped 15 years, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. "People wake up.... It has been the source of the so-called botched executions because the people have been awake and in total pain because they're trying to use midazolam for a goal it wasn't meant to be used".
When the two convicted murderers were put to death, the 20 or so witnesses heard only what Department of Correction Director Wendy Kelley wanted them to hear.
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