Eleven Years of Lethal Injection Challenges in Arkansas

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