Contrasting accounts of Arkansas execution from witnesses
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — As a condemned killer lay on a gurney awaiting lethal injection in Arkansas’ death chamber, a federal judge had to decide whether there was sufficient evidence that an inmate executed earlier that evening showed signs that he was suffering while he was put to death.
The judge ultimately allowed the second execution to go ahead after a hastily arranged 20-minute hearing by phone, marking the nation’s first double execution on one day in nearly 17 years, but the widely varying witness accounts of the first execution illustrate the risks that have made efforts to put more than one inmate to death in a day so rare.
Those questions loom as Arkansas prepares to put another inmate to death Thursday under what originally was an unprecedented plan to execute eight men over an 11-day period.
“Now you’ve got to turn around in 48 hours or so and see if you can figure out whether it actually worked right before Thursday’s execution,” said John Blume, director of the Death Penalty Project at Cornell Law School. “I think it’s just really an almost impossible test.”