Politicians in the state of Arkansas, including other states in favor of the death penalty, have consistently passed laws allowing experimental killing tools and permitting the executions of two and three prisoners at one time. At that time these executions were believed to be humane and state of the art, despite evidence to the contrary.
This month, after years of no executions, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchison has approved the first two of seven deaths on April 17. Both of these men, Don Davis and Bruce Earl Ward, have been on death row since the early 1990's.
Davis and Earl will be Put To Death on the same gurney, one right after the other, from lethal injections.
Is there a human experiment going on?
It has been almost twelve years since Arkansas has executed a prisoner on death row. If things go according to plan, executioners will be using a new sedative – midazolam – which has never before been used on death row inmates in Arkansas. The drug is believed to render the prisoner unconscious so they can then be injected by two lethal drugs. No one knows if these drugs work or how they will affect the prisoner.
No one knows if midazolam actually works. Except for a few undisclosed people, no one will know the identity of the executioner, or where the drugs are coming from.
Arkansas law prohibits such information from being made public.
Why the rush to execute seven men?
Once the successful deaths of Davis and Ward have been completed, Hutchison plans on wasting no time conducting the same lethal procedure on other inmates. Ledelle Lee and Stacey Johnson's deaths are scheduled for April 20th. Another double execution of Marcel Williams and Jack Jones, Jr.
will be performed on April 24, and Kenneth Williams will be put to death on April 27. That is a total of seven men who will be put to death this month in Arkansas, in a span of just eleven days.
Why the obvious rush to execute these men? Because Arkansas' supply of midazolam is due to expire at the end of April. So, in order to avoid having to find new lethal injection drugs, officials want to use the stuff before it reaches its Expiration Date.
Midazolam's inconvenient expiration date doesn't seem to be Arkansas' only problem when dealing with these executions. It seems that they also have a problem finding the necessary witnesses for these scheduled executions. One more minor inconvenience holding things up? Due to so many years of not executing people, Arkansas officials have become a bit rusty.
