Arkansas Set To Execute Seven Prisoners In Ten Days

Starting Monday, April 17, Arkansas is set to execute seven prisoners in a ten-day span, which is almost a quarter of Arkansas’s death row inmates, before the drugs used in the lethal injections expires on April 30. The executions will mark the most concentrated mass execution in the United States in fifty years. Arkansas is one of the thirty-one states with the death penalty and has executed twenty-seven people in forty-one years. April 17 will mark the first execution in Arkansas in ten years. Prisoners Bruce Ward, Marcel Williams, Kenneth Williams, Stacey Johnson, Ledell Lee, Don Davis, and Jack Jones were all convicted of murder between 1989 and 1999. Prisoner Jason McGehee was originally included in the list of prisoners before a judge granted clemency. The announcement, which was first made just forty-nine days before the first execution, has been met with resistance and backlash from advocates who argue that this rushed process is inhumane and dangerous.

Arkansas uses a lethal injection comprised of three separate drugs to execute prisoners. The first drug, midazolam, is meant to sedate the prisoner. The second drug is meant to paralyze the prisoner. The third drug, potassium chloride, is designed to stop the heart and effectively kill the prisoner. Despite the characterization of lethal injections as a humane form of execution, many have argued that these lethal injections are tortuous and cruel. This is because the midazolam does not always work, which then causes the prisoner to feel the pain of the third drug while remaining paralyzed. According to lethal injections expert at the University of California at Berkeley Megan McCracken, “if the prisoner is placed under surgical anesthesia by the first drug, then the fact that the other two drugs cause pain wouldn’t matter. But if that first drug for any number of reasons doesn’t work, then you have a person who is paralyzed who has been administered an incredibly painful drug that will cause cardiac arrest.”

The same cocktail of drugs was used in Oklahoma during two botched executions that caused a national uproar. In April 2014, witnesses watched Clayton Lockett struggle to breathe. In January 2015, Charles Warner cried, “my body is on fire” as the drug took effect. Oklahoma has stopped executions until a new system is put in place. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson is not concerned with the mistakes made in Oklahoma though and is confident that all seven men will be executed before the drugs expire. Others though are fearful of Arkansas’s ability to handle a mass execution. According to Dale Baich, an Assistant Federal Director in Arizona, who has worked on Death Row since the 1980s, states that “the stress on the prison and medical staff will be increased, and the risk of making mistakes is multiplied. This, along with using a drug that has been used in numerous botched executions, should make prison officials in Arkansas very nervous.”

Though 67% of Arkansas citizens supported the death penalty in 2014 in a survey done by the Opinion Research Associates, support for the death penalty in the United States has decreased tremendously since the 1980s. The death penalty also overwhelmingly impacts people of color. In the case of Arkansas, four of the prisoners are black men, while only 15.4% of Arkansas’s population is black, according to the most recent census. Additionally, various studies have found that the death penalty does not decrease crime and 157 people on death row have since been found innocent. One man found innocent is Damien Echols, whose case caught the attention of newspapers and celebrities. Echols has returned to Arkansas for the first time since his release in 2011 to advocate for the prisoners with whom he once shared death row.

Though the death penalty is slowly losing its power and appeal, this mass execution, which is a “conveyor belt of death,” according to Echols, shows the dangerous mythology surrounding the death penalty. Many of these prisoners are mentally ill and suffered their own traumas in life. Though Arkansas politicians use the death penalty to garner support and appear “tough on crime,” this stance has lasting consequences and perpetuates a need to treat prisoners inhumanely. April 17 will mark another dark chapter in the ongoing history of execution in the United States and these men will be victims of a rushed court system, simply because the drugs were about to expire.

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