Arkansas Applies The Death Penalty To Two Prisoners In One Day

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

Despite complaints from opponents of the death penalty, Arkansas executed two inmates on the same day on Monday, something never seen in US history.

This double execution carried out three hours apart adds to that practiced a few days before on another tenant on death row, the first in twelve years.

So much activity is due to the authorities' haste to comply with death sentences before the drugs with which the lethal injection is applied expire on April 30.

According to The Associated Press, the first inmate, Jack Jones, 52, was executed after 7:00 p.m. local time. The agency reporter who attended the execution said that before he was given the lethal injection, Jones moved his lips briefly, then officials in charge put a tongue suppressor in his mouth intermittently for the first few minutes.

His chest stopped moving two minutes later and he was pronounced dead at 7:20 pm

Shortly thereafter, attorneys for the second convict, Marcel Williams, 46, persuaded a federal judge to briefly delay his execution over concerns about how the first one had developed.

In their emergency request, Williams' attorneys said it took 45 minutes for officials to put an IV into Jones's neck before putting it on another part of his body. Likewise, they argued that the condemned man, who weighed 400 pounds (181 kilos) faced a “tortured” death due to his weight.

After a short delay, the judge in charge of the case ordered the execution of Williams, who was pronounced dead at 10:33 pm local time.

Jones was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Mary Phillips in 1995, whom he was found guilty of strangling with the cord of a coffee maker. He was also convicted of the attempted murder of the 11-year-old Phillips' daughter, as well as a second rape and murder in the state of Florida.

In Williams' case, he had been convicted after being found guilty of the 1994 rape and murder of Stacy Errickson, 22, who was kidnapped at a gas station in central Arkansas.

These executions are part of a program announced by Governor Asa Hutchinson that includes four double executions in 11 days during the remainder of April.

If carried out, it would be a record number of executions in a short period of time since the United States Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. However, four of them have been suspended, while there is an upcoming one scheduled for Thursday.