The state government of Arkansas plans to execute eight men over a period of 10 days in April because one of the key drugs in their lethal injection protocol is set to expire at the end of the month.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson set the dates between April 17 and 27 and will require the state's department of corrections to execute two men per day with a few days between each lethal injection.
"As required by law, I have set the execution dates for the eight convicted of capital murder. This is based upon the attorney general's referral and the exhaustion of all appeals and court reviews that have been ongoing for more than a decade," Hutchinson said in a statement, though another statement added that the executions were placed so closely together because the availability of the drugs for future lethal injections was unclear.
On March 8, Arkansas acquired the final drug needed to execute the eight inmates, under the execution protocols used by the state.
The men make up nearly a quarter of Arkansas's death row. All eight were convicted of murders committed between 1989 and 1999, but none have taken the final walk to the execution chamber. That is because Arkansas' capital punishment has been held up since 2005 by numerous legal challenges and the state's consistent struggle to obtain lethal injection drugs.
Attorneys who represent the eight men persist in attempting to block the executions. Marcel Wayne Williams, one of the eight inmates, filed an application for clemency on Tuesday, citing childhood trauma including physical and sexual abuse as a failure of the justice system.
Though Arkansas hasn't executed anyone in 12 years and only Texas has successfully executed eight prisoners in a month in May and June 1997, according to the Death Penalty Information Center the state's department of corrections and governor's office say they will have no difficulty carrying out the procedures.
"We're confident that the Department of Corrections has the resources and knowledge to do what they do," said J.R. Davis, the director of communications at the governor's office.
"You'd like to have more time, but because of everything that has happened, because of the clemency requests and the stays, and so on and so forth this is where we are," he added.
While perfectly lawful, the rush to use the drugs before their expiration is unprecedented.
No state has executed eight death row inmates in 10 days. No state has used this particular "cocktail" of drugs to execute two in one day, either.
"I think this particular action is extreme and unnecessary," argued Arkansas State Rep. Warwick Sabin, a Democrat who represents Little Rock. "It creates the possibility for grave error and draws attention to the state in a way that doesn't ultimately benefit us."
