Two others, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams, were executed on Monday in the first double-execution in the US since 2000.
Kenneth Williams was the fourth convicted killer executed in Arkansas in the last eight days.
And now, the question is: What happens to those inmates after the lethal injection drug supply expires?
A spokesman for Gov. Asa Hutchinson called it "an involuntary muscular reaction". State Sen. Trent Garner posted on Twitter, "I witnessed the #ARexecutions; the inmate did not suffer or seem in pain".
A federal judge has granted a request from attorneys to preserve evidence from the body of an inmate who lurched and convulsed on the gurney during his Thursday night execution.
Arkansas set off a legal battle when it announced plans to execute eight death row inmates, pictured here, in 11 days. He said a written report would not be issued.
His lawyers unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay, saying the inmate should not be executed because three health care professionals had determined he was "intellectually disabled".
An Associated Press reporter who witnessed Williams' execution Thursday says his body jerked 15 times in quick succession about three minutes into the process.
Lee was pronounced dead at 11:56 p.m., Arkansas Department of Correction Director Wendy Kelly said. These requests eventually made it to the Arkansas Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the state.
Major pharmaceutical companies began a sales ban on lethal injections drugs about six years ago to death penalty prison systems due to ethical concerns.
Williams read a prepared final statement, apologizing to the families he "senselessly wronged and deprived of their loved ones". He also spoke in tongues, the unintelligible but language-like speech used in some religions. At that point, he would be unable to move or let executioners know if the midazolam hadn't taken full effect.
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Death penalty critics have argued for years that midazolam is a sedative - not an anesthetic - and that the condemned would feel tortuous pain from the drugs that come next.
"It remains an unacceptable denial of human rights and dignity and fails to deter crime", it said, adding that it would continue to raise the issue with the U.S. and other countries using capital punishment.
The OHCHR was especially concerned "that these executions were scheduled based on the expiration date" of the sedative used for the lethal injections.
Kenneth Williams' 21-year-old daughter, Jasmine Johnson, and her young daughter traveled to Varner Supermax, in Grady, using plane tickets purchased for them by the family of Michael Greenwood, whom Williams killed in a 1999 auto crash that occurred after Williams escaped from prison.
"Any amount of movement he might have had was far less than any of his victims", said Jodie Efird, one of Boren's daughters, who witnessed the execution.
Hours ahead of the execution, Greenwood's daughter sent a letter asking the governor to spare Williams's life.
The attorney general's office says Kenneth Williams' "coughing and muscle spasms" were associated with the use of midazolam, which is the first drug in Arkansas' lethal injection protocol. Witnesses to those lengthier executions also described hearing inmates breathe heavily, snore or snort or seeing them struggle against their restraints.
"At a minimum, this was a deviation from the protocol".
"When you have the procedures that were close together and under pressure, the likelihood of problems arising is much greater. You could see even for a small compounding pharmacy, they don't want to be known as the pharmacy that makes the drugs that kill people", said Dr. Peter Rice, a professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy.
Williams' lawyers had said he had sickle-cell trait, lupus and brain damage, and argued that the combined maladies could subject him to an exceptionally painful execution in violation of the Constitution.
It's not clear how many doses of the other two drugs Arkansas uses to execute prisoners remain in the state's stash.
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