LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas’ aggressive effort to conduct its first executions since 2005 stalled for a second time this week when courts blocked lethal injections set for Thursday, prompting Gov. Asa Hutchinson to complain that state judges aren’t honoring the decisions jurors made when sentencing the prisoners to death.
The highest courts in Arkansas and the U.S. could put the executions back on track, but for now Arkansas faces an uphill battle to put any inmate to death before the end of April, when one of its lethal injection drugs expires.
The state originally set eight executions over an 11-day period in April, which would have been the most by a state in such a compressed period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Wave after wave of legal challenges followed.
The first two inmates scheduled for execution on Monday were spared — one of them when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to reverse an Arkansas Supreme Court order minutes before his death warrant expired. The state concedes the pair will not be put to death this month. The remaining six could still theoretically be put to death this month, though two of those inmates have received stays that the state hasn’t yet appealed. Another ruling Wednesday could scuttle the entire schedule.
In that decision, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray blocked the state from using the drug vecuronium bromide, siding with McKesson Corp., which had argued that it sold Arkansas the drug for medical use, not executions. The company said it would suffer harm financially and to its reputation if the executions were carried out.
“McKesson was duped … into providing the drugs,” lawyer John Tull argued. “It’s a very big deal at McKesson to have our drugs associated with that.”
Judd Deere, a spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, said the state will appeal Gray’s ruling.
In another setback for the state, the Arkansas Supreme Court on Wednesday granted a stay of execution for Stacey Johnson, one of the inmates scheduled to die Thursday, drawing a rebuke from death penalty supporter Hutchinson. Ledell Lee, who had also been scheduled for execution Thursday, is still seeking a stay in a separate case.
“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.
Lawyers for the state said earlier this month that the prisoners know the state’s supply a sedative that’s part of its execution plan expires April 30 and that it would be “impossible” to execute the prisoners because “Arkansas has no source of midazolam” beyond that already in stock.
It was unclear whether Rutledge would appeal the stay of execution for Johnson to the U.S. Supreme Court after the state lost an appeal to the high court on a case involving another inmate Monday night. Deere said the state was reviewing its options.
In the vecuronium bromide case, a state prison official testified that he deliberately ordered the drug last year in a way that there wouldn’t be a paper trail, relying on phone calls and text messages. Arkansas Department of Correction Deputy Director Rory Griffin said he didn’t keep records of the texts, but McKesson salesman Tim Jenkins did. In text messages from Jenkins’ phone, there is no mention that the drug would be used in executions.
Pharmaceuticals companies and other suppliers have objected to their drugs being used in executions and have been trying to stop states from getting supplies for lethal injections.
