Any murder is a heinous crime and eight death row inmates in Arkansas deserve nothing better than death but, the authorities have shocked everyone by scheduling the executions within a period of ten days next month. The reason for the haste is because the Lethal Injection to be used has very little residual life and will become life-expired in April 2017.
The lethal injection is midazolam, a drug that has been used in other states in recent years.
What are the facts?
Gov. Asa Hutchinson has signed proclamations and the four execution dates for the eight inmates have been tentatively fixed as between April 17 and 27.
There would be two executions on each date. Adherence to such a schedule would go down in history as an event unmatched by any state since the resumption of the death penalty in the United States in 1977.
At present there are 34 death row inmates in Arkansas and the eight men to be executed are a mix of black and white - four black and four white. All of them are murder convicts and they committed the crimes between 1989 and 1999. Some of the victims were helpless women like an 18-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted and strangled, a 26 -year old woman who was assaulted 36 times with a tire tool and a cheerleader at the University of Arkansas.
Those who commit brutal crimes of this nature need to be put away for good else they could repeat the crimes and take some more lives.
Justification of the case
It is a fact that in America, there has been a sharp decline in the number of executions and, even though a section of the country does support the death penalty, its support base has been steadily on the decline since the mid-1990s.
During a news conference, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, regretted that the executions had to be done in such a hurry but, given the circumstances, there was no other way out.
He justified the decision by explaining that the state uses three drugs in its lethal-injection procedure and there were doubts about the future availability of one of these, namely midazolam.
Incidentally, midazolam had been used in other states in recent years but the results were disconcerting due to which many pharmaceutical companies have imposed restriction on the use of their products for capital punishment.
