Arkansas plans unprecedented seven executions in 11 days
Arkansas is preparing to execute seven death row inmates in 11 days this month before the state’s deadly drugs expire, an unprecedented number of lethal injections in such a narrow window.
The hurried schedule has prompted unease from the state’s Republican governor, lawsuits from the condemned inmates, and criticism from an array of former corrections officials nationwide.
Though the death penalty has been dormant in Arkansas — these would be the first executions there in 12 years — the lethal injections have put the state at the center of the debate about capital punishment as it becomes less common in the United States. Fewer states are putting condemned inmates to death, public support for executions is declining and authorities are struggling to find the drugs used in lethal injections amid a shortage spurred in part by drugmakers’ objections to the death penalty....
