Eleven Years of Lethal Injection Challenges in Arkansas
35 Pages Posted: 21 Apr 2017
Date Written: October 20, 2016
Abstract
In 2015, Arkansas, along with ten other states, had not conducted an execution in more than eight years. This article provides a look into how Arkansas made it onto that list. The drought is not from a lack of effort by the state. In the last ten years, twenty-one execution dates have been set and all were stayed. Nineteen of those were stayed because of lethal injection litigation. As this article will recount, the decade-long hiatus is the result of dogged litigation on behalf of death-sentenced prisoners, repeated amendment of the state’s lethal injection law and missteps by state officials.
Keywords: Death Penalty, Arkansas, Lethal Injection
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