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Home News Cases and articles Arkansas AG offers revised lethal injection protocol Arkansas AG offers revised lethal injection protocol
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
Executioners administering lethal injections in Arkansas will follow methods used by "medical paraprofessionals" to ensure that condemned inmates are unconscious before delivering the two final drugs to carry out the death penalty, a revised state protocol says.
The state attorney general's office offered the revised lethal injection procedures as part of an effort to lift federal court stays of execution against inmates challenging the method.
The new procedure, dated May 22, also adds mixing the three drugs used in Arkansas executions in accordance with the manufacturer's specifications and the "already existing practice" that executioners have at least two years of medical experience.
"The measures remove any substantial foreseeable risk of wanton infliction of pain during executions carried out by the state of Arkansas," the federal filing by Attorney General Dustin McDaniel reads.
Under Arkansas' new execution rules, either the state's deputy director of prisons or another staff member will check an inmate for "movement, opened eyes, eyelash reflex and response to verbal commands and physical stimuli." The next two drugs will be administered only if the inmate has no response and three minutes have passed since the injection of the anesthetic, the protocol states.
Gov. Mike Beebe has signed three death warrants since 2007, setting execution dates for inmates Don William Davis, Jack Harold Jones Jr. and Terrick Nooner. But Davis and Jones both joined a lawsuit by Nooner mirroring a complaint that U.S. Supreme Court justices examined from two condemned prisoners in Kentucky.
The high court issued a 7-2 ruling saying the Kentucky prisoners failed to show the state's refusal to try untested alternatives constituted cruel and unusual punishment. However, the court stays remain in place as the men's attorneys have requested time to refile their objections.
After the Supreme Court ruling, Beebe said the state would change its lethal injection procedures before conducting any other executions. Arkansas, like Kentucky, is one of roughly three dozen states that use three drugs - an anesthetic, a muscle paralyzer and a substance to stop the heart - to kill death-row inmates.
An attorney for Jones had previously derided Arkansas' method for checking an inmate's consciousness as "a tap-and-shot method taught in CPR courses." McDaniel's court filing says Kentucky only requires guards to look over an inmate to ensure they are unconscious.
"The protections against unnecessary pain in Arkansas' protocol not only meet but exceed the protections found in the undeniably constitutional Kentucky protocol," McDaniel wrote.
Forty men are on death-row at the state's Varner Unit. Arkansas has executed 27 inmates since the Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions in 1976. The state's last execution took place in 2005, when officials executed Eric Nance.
Since the Supreme Court decision, McDaniel has already asked Beebe to set an execution date for death-row inmate Frank Williams Jr., 41. William later asked the federal court to add him into the other inmates' challenge to lethal injection.
This article was published Tuesday, June 10, 2008.