For the first time since 2005, the state of Arkansas used the death penalty on Ledell Lee last night. Ledel Lee, 51, was convicted of the brutal murder of a 26 year old woman in 1993.
Justice Neil Gorsuch took his first major action on the U.S. Supreme Court by casting the deciding vote to let Arkansas begin executing a group of death-row inmates.
Williams' "morbid obesity makes it likely that either the IV line can not be placed or that it will be placed in error, thus causing substantial damage (like a collapsed lung)", his attorneys wrote in an earlier court filing asking justices to block the execution.
"Unless the prisoner is unconscious, then drugs two and three will cause pain - torturous punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment, and state guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment", attorney Jeffrey Rosenzweig, who is representing three of the inmates, said in a statement. Back-to-back executions set for Monday were indefinitely halted.
"The department is prepared to carry out this sentence at this point", Solomon Graves, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said less than 30 minutes before midnight.
In the court filing, Williams' attorneys, citing unidentified eyewitnesses, said Jones "was moving his lips and gulping for air".
Lee's execution was part of Arkansas' plan to put eight men to death in the span of 11 days.
The pharmaceutical companies believe that diverting their drugs for executions presents a public health risk, and violates rules within the companies' distribution. Nonetheless, the condemned men's attorneys argued that the use of Midazolam might lead to an unnecessarily painful death, especially given the rate at which the executions were to be carried out.
The Associated Press has obtained letters showing that a drugmaker past year asked Arkansas not to purchase its products for use in executions.
Opponent Roberta Vinci questions Maria Sharapova's wild card
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) agreed that Sharapova was not an intentional doper shortened her ban from two years to 15 months.
"While other states have increasingly come to the conclusion that the capital punishment system is beyond fix, Arkansas is running in the opposite direction from progress".
Jones and Marcel Williams are scheduled to die on Monday and another inmate, Kenneth Williams, is set for execution Thursday. The state originally scheduled an unprecedented eight executions between April 17 and 27, but several cases are now tied up in the courts.
Initially, Arkansas had meant to put Lee and seven other men to death in the span of just 11 days, racing against the clock of the expiration of one of the drugs in the state's chemical execution cocktail. He strangled her with the cord to a coffee pot.
Just before Lee was put to death, officials at the Cummins Unit prison in Grady, Arkansas, asked him twice for his final words, but he did not respond.
The Arkansas Department of Correction reported that Lee requested Holy Communion as his last meal Thursday night.
Lawyers for Jones' say he suffers from diabetes and is on insulin, has high blood pressure, neuropathy and had one leg amputated below the knee. Gorsuch and his colleagues' votes overrode these stays, rejecting arguments that the pace and manner of Arkansas' executions made them unjust.
The Arkansas Supreme Court also reversed a restraining order on the state's use of vecuronium bromide, one of the three drugs used in lethal injections.
The last state to put more than one inmate to death on the same day was Texas, which executed two killers in August 2000. "While reasonable people can disagree on whether death is an appropriate form of punishment, no one should be executed when there is a possibility that person is innocent".
Comments