Arkansas conducts nation's 1st double execution since 2000

Dunham says he thinks blocking the sound fuels controversy and speculation, especially when last minute legal appeals are happening.

Jones was the second person executed in Arkansas since 2005, after the state put Ledell Lee to death last week.

Williams' lawyers tried to block the execution minutes up to the actual event, claiming there might be complications based on Jones execution four hours earlier.

SOLOMON GRAVES: A lethal injection was administered at 7:06 p.m.

Lawyers for the state said the inmates scheduled for execution filed an "avalanche" of lawsuits in hopes to stay their executions.

Jack Harold Jones, 52, was pronounced dead at 7:20 p.m. His chest stopped moving two minutes after a consciousness check. Williams was declared dead after he was administered the same injection about three hours later, at 10:33 p.m. EDT, following denial by federal and state courts of last-minute appeals to stay the executions.

KAUFFMAN: The U.S. district judge lifted the stay and Marcel Williams' execution went forward.

The two death row inmates were executed with the questionable drug cocktail within three hours of one another in the Cummins Unit prison, 75 miles from the state capitol.

The nation's first double execution since 2000 was carried out in Arkansas on Monday despite substantial protest and the likelihood that the first execution was botched and inhumane.

Jones was convicted in 1996 of raping and murdering Mary Phillips in the accounting office where she worked as a bookkeeper. She was strangled to death with a coffee pot cord while daughter Lacey was tied to a chair.

Speaking to local broadcaster TVS 11, he recalled: "I was doing the photographs and at the time I thought that she was dead". She regained consciousness as police photographers took pictures of the crime scene. He gave a lengthy last statement, with his final words: "I'm sorry". "It's a good thing that it's done, for her", Whitaker told CNN affiliate KARK.

"What they've done is help serve justice", Lacey Phillips-Seal said.

"As far as both executions, I used the word flawlessly earlier, it's the truth", he said.

Attorneys for the state called the allegation "utterly baseless". The jury sentenced Jack Jones to death, and his sentence was upheld by judges and reviewed thoroughly in courts of appeal at each level. Jones apologized to his victims' families.

Attorneys for Jones say he could suffer from a "torturous death" because he may be resistant to midazolam. "I'm glad that part of my life, that chapter is closed".

Williams was sentenced to death for the 1994 rape and killing of 22-year-old Stacy Errickson, whom he kidnapped from a petrol station in central Arkansas. On Nov. 20, 1994, Errickson, then 23, was forced into a auto at gunpoint by Williams. Her body was found in a shallow grave on December 5.

Jones argued his health conditions could lead to a painful death.

But she acknowledged there may have been pain she couldn't see.

"It was after the microphone was off so we don't know if he was saying something... but it was moving for about... what would you say two minutes". His death warrant was to expire at midnight. Under Arkansas' protocol, executioners administer 100 mg, or more than 11 times the typical dose, five minutes after the midazolam is administered and once the inmate is unconscious. "The U.S. Supreme Court denied those claims without comment".

Judicial executions may be performed in 31 U.S. states, and when they are, they always have an audience.

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Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida, chair of the US bishops' domestic justice committee, also called for the sentences to be commuted to life imprisonment.

According to Dunham's organization, since 1973, more than 155 people have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence often through the efforts of advocates Blecker says he supports.