Arkansas plan to execute seven men over 11 days sparks opposition

As the bells ring out on Easter weekend from the many churches that pepper the streets of Washington DC, there is an air of quiet about the city. Congress is on a two-week break and the president has gone to Mar-a-Lago, though the first lady is due back in town for the annual Easter Egg roll in the White House on Monday.

But as the country comes to terms with a president increasingly flexing his military muscle on the international stage, another controversy that strikes right at the heart of debates about US morality is brewing.

Next week Arkansas is due to begin a series of executions that many are describing as death by “assembly line”. Seven men will be killed by lethal injection over an 11-day period, beginning on Monday.

While the southern state has not carried out a judicial killing since 2005, governor Asa Hutchison has signed a warrant ordering the executions. The reason? The state's stock of midazolam, one of three drugs used to kill inmates through lethal injection, reaches its expiration date at the end of the month.

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When the executions take place, midazolam, a sedative, will be the first of a three-drug cocktail injected into the men to induce death.

Arkansas has never used midazolam in executions. In states that have, the drug has proved insufficiently effective to render the prisoner completely unconscious. The most infamous botched use of the drug occurred in the Clayton Lockett case in Oklahoma in 2014.

Heart attack

Lockett, who had been convicted of murder, rape and kidnapping, died 43 minutes after the first injection was delivered, groaning and writhing before he finally died of a suspected heart attack on the execution table.

Despite international condemnation of the botched Oklahoma execution, months later the supreme court ruled that the use of the sedative did not violate the US constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The four liberal judges on the court dissented, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor saying the opinion "leaves petitioners exposed to what may well be the chemical equivalent of being burned at the stake".

Part of the problem facing states is that pharmaceutical companies have refused to supply the drugs that have traditionally been used as sedatives in lethal injections, such as sodium thiopental or pentobarbital, prompting states to turn to midazolam.

While next week’s planned executions in Arkansas may be the latest flashpoint in the debate over capital punishment, there have been relatively few protests in the state itself, where two-thirds of people back capital punishment, according to a 2015 study.

Nationally, the issue is gaining some traction, but has been overshadowed by the endless foreign policy developments in Washington this week.

There have been exceptions, however. The European Union issued a statement calling on the governor of Arkansas to commute the death sentences.

“The European Union opposes capital punishment, which fails to act as a deterrent to crime, represents an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity and cannot be justified under any circumstances,” the EU’s External Action Service said in a statement, adding that more than 140 countries in the world were now abolitionist “in law or practice”.

Some high-profile individuals have tried to highlight the case over the last week.

‘Legal train wreck’

In an opinion piece for USA Today, Arkansas-native John Grisham said his state was heading for a "spectacular legal train wreck", noting that "not even Texas, with its vaunted assembly line" has ever dreamed of eight kills in such a short time.

Sr Helen Prejean, the nun famous for her book and the subsequent film Dead Man Walking, and freed death row inmate Damien Echols are also among those who have publicly opposed the planned executions.

Whether the executions go ahead is uncertain, but for anti-capital punishment campaigners there have been positive signs in the last five years that the public appetite for the death penalty is fading. The number of executions in the US since capital punishment was reintroduced in 1977 fell to its lowest level in 2016, not least due to the restrictions in accessing the required drugs for lethal injections. The death penalty is illegal in 19 of the 50 US states as well as in the District of Columbia.

But in the week that Neil Gorsuch was sworn-in as the 113th US supreme court justice, the resurgent debate over capital punishment is also a reminder of the unique power of that court. With the conservative balance of the nine-seat court now restored following Gorsuch's confirmation, the future shape of the court will have a profound impact on the future of capital punishment and other moral issues facing the United States in the coming years.