As state officials prepare to carry out a double execution Thursday ahead of a drug expiration deadline and despite the setback the U.S. Supreme Court delivered late Monday, lawyers for those condemned men look to be taking a different approach: claiming the prisoners are actually innocent.
That tally would have marked the highest concentration of executions over such a short period in a single state since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed reinstitution of capital punishment in 1976. The court hears arguments in the expert witness case on April 24.
Bruce Ward and Don Davis had originally been the first of eight Arkansas inmates scheduled to die within 11 days of each other.
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, meanwhile, says she is pursuing an appeal of the stay of Davis' and Ward's executions.
April 18 US drug wholesaler McKesson Medical-Surgical Inc sued Arkansas a second time on Tuesday, saying the state acted fraudulently in obtaining a drug it intends to administer in a record number of executions this month and demanding it not use the batch to kill people.
Arkansas had scheduled the executions before its supply of midazolam expired at the end of April. But a series of legal challenges has spared the lives of both inmates and thrown the state's capital punishment process into chaos.
"ADC meant to use this product in connection with executions, a fact that was never disclosed to McKesson", the company said in the filing at a state court in Little Rock, the state capital. He is one of two inmates scheduled for execution Thursday.
It capped a chaotic day of legal wrangling in state and federal courts Monday as Arkansas tried to clear obstacles to carrying out its first executions since 2005.
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Davis' death sentence was for the 1990 death of Rogers, Arkansas resident Jane Daniel.
That decision "stirred a wave of consternation and threats on social media from state lawmakers and conservatives", member station KUAR noted on Saturday - because shortly before the decision, the judge was photographed protesting the death penalty at the gates of the Governor's Mansion.
McKesson contends that the state failed to disclose the vecuronium bromide it purchased would be used in its three-drug lethal injection protocol.
The 8th Circuit ruling on Monday could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The legal team representing the inmates argues the state's rapid execution schedule increases the likelihood the procedures will be botched, and that the drugs used amount to cruel and unusual punishment. He had been served what was to be his last meal, despite the state Supreme Court's hold on his execution. If taken to the Supreme Court, the justices would likely need to give a more defining answer about midazolam.
"While this has been an exhausting day for all involved, tomorrow we will continue to fight back on last minute appeals on efforts to block justice for the victims' families", said Hutchinson in a statement.
McKesson filed a complaint April 18 in Pulaski County Circuit Court seeking a restraining order and injunction to prevent the vecuronium it supplied from being used "for something other than a legitimate medical goal".
Baker cited the Eighth Circuit's reversal of her earlier stay in her decision to cancel the hearing. Protesters gather outside the state Capitol building on Friday, April 14, 2017, in Little Rock, Ark., to voice their opposition to Arkansas' seven upcoming executions.
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