Arkansas death row inmate faces execution after injunction lifted

[Eugene]

Last edited Thu Apr 20, 2017, 11:52 PM - Edit history (3)

Source: The Guardian

Arkansas is preparing its death chamber for a possible execution Thursday night after the state supreme court lifted a temporary injunction blocking its use of a medical drug that a US healthcare giant had been duped out of under false pretences.

The states top court sided with the Arkansas attorney general Leslie Rutledge and overturned an earlier lower court ruling that had imposed an injunction that had stymied any executions from going ahead. The ruling in effect allows the state to resume its highly contentious plan for a spate of quick-fire executions before its batch of the sedative midazolam expires at the end of the month.

Two executions are scheduled for Thursday night. One of them, Stacey Johnson, remains on hold after the state supreme court agreed with his lawyers that he should have the chance for DNA testing on crime-scene materials that would either prove his innocence or confirm his guilt.

But the life of Ledell Lee, the second prisoner facing an execution on Thursday, now hangs in the balance. His only chance to avoid being placed on a gurney and injected with three deadly chemicals, some time after 7pm, now rests with the US supreme court, to which he will appeal at the eleventh hour.

[font size1]-snip-[/font]


Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/20/arkansas-executions-resume-ledell-lee

---

Ed Pilkington in New York
Thursday 20 April 2017 23.17 BST

_____________________________________________________________________________

Update: Arkansas execution delayed by Supreme Court; state abandons second planned lethal injection

[Jake Stern]

1. Just don't see how anyone who considers themselves civilized and educated

Can support the death penalty

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

3. Savage ignorance is a virtue to many in this country

I remember when I was a child and I learned about the death penalty for the first time, I was horrified and disgusted. The very thought that California had a gas chamber was incomprehensible to me, the place I lived did that. It was better still my mother explained to me, California didn't actually have the death penalty at that time but people were fighting to bring it back.

The way I felt in that moment has stuck with me my whole life.

[christx30]

4. One of the seven:

Jack Harold Jones was convicted of rape and capital murder in 1996 for the death of Mary Phillips. On June 6, 1995 Phillips, 34, was at an accounting office in Bald Knob, Arkansas, with her daughter Lacy, 11. Jones robbed them at gunpoint and killed Phillips after raping her. He violently beat Lacy and left her for dead. She regained consciousness as police photographers -- who thought she was dead -- took pictures of the crime scene.

Lacy Phillips, the victim’s 9-year-old daughter, testified at trial that a man who matched Jones’s description had entered the accounting business where her mother worked, forced the two of them to lie down, and took cash from a register. She said that he choked her until she passed out and hit her with a gun. She woke up as police were investigating the crime scene, where her mother had been found, strangled and bludgeoned. Using the girl’s description of the suspect, police found Jones, and he confessed to the murder.

In 2003, Jones’s DNA was matched to another murder victim, Lorraine Anne Barrett, who had been found dead in a Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., motel room in 1991. He pleaded guilty to this murder as well. A sister of Barrett wrote in an online forum in 2007, “Let’s stop playing games and get busy with this execution!”

Behind each of these people is a victim who's last moments were filled with terror and pain.

[Jake Stern]

5. So that makes it right that we take on the role of killer?

Why is a lifetime locked away never enough?

[christx30]

9. I think it's important that we not

forget why these men are where they are. They are brutal killers. It's best to not think of them as innocent victims of the justice system. So I don't give a crap about them in the least.
There was a man gunned down on my street 2 years ago. Happened close enough to where I could see the police lights from my front porch. I know his name. I know his mom's and his now four-year-old daughter's nameThey just caught the killer 2 months ago. I haven't bothered to learn the name of the killer. I don't care.
That man in my above post changed so many lives for the worse. He doesn't deserve any pity or sympathy. Toss him in a hole and wait for him to die.

[Judi Lynn]

6. "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. 20 Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. 21 Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

Romans 12:19

Had no idea "the Lord" posteth here.

[LanternWaste]

10. I fail to see how his death removes that terror and pain.

I fail to see how his death removes that terror and pain.

If it does, please objectively explain how.
If not, then let's simply admit to a priority of visceral vengeance rather than actual justice.

[Arazi]

2. This is fucked up. Dammit

[mwooldri]

7. State sanctioned murder. Enough said...

The people in the Arkansas legislature would probably pass legislation to prohibit abortion on the "sanctity of life" argument, yet support the death penalty. In my mind, that's just fucked up.

[Eugene]

8. Update: Arkansas execution delayed by Supreme Court; state abandons second planned lethal injection

Source: Washington Post

Arkansas execution delayed by Supreme Court; state abandons second planned lethal injection

By Mark Berman April 20 at 11:39 PM

Arkansas appeared Thursday night to be prepared to carry out the state’s first execution in more than a decade, even as the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily postponed the lethal injection and other appeals were still pending that could add further delays.

This uncertainty amid a whirlwind of legal filings and orders came after Arkansas entered this week hoping to begin an unprecedented wave of executions, plans that were imperiled by a series of court orders halting at least some of the eight lethal injections originally set for April.

As part of its aggressive scheduling, Arkansas planned to carry out back-to-back executions on Thursday night at a state prison southeast of Little Rock. But that was abandoned when a state court blocked one of those lethal injections, and officials instead focused solely on plans to execute Ledell Lee, 51, by lethal injection.

Lee was sentenced to death in 1995 for the killing of Debra Reese, who was beaten to death in her home two years earlier. According to court petitions and his attorneys, Lee has long denied involvement in Reese’s death, and he was seeking DNA testing to try and prove his innocence.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/04/20/arkansas-plan-to-resume-executions-is-blocked-by-new-court-orders/?utm_term=.91665029e8a0