The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday said that the state's lethal-injection law is constitutional, upholding a state law that was passed after the justices struck down an earlier law on the subject.
This ruling, which comes a decade after Arkansas last executed an inmate, could potentially allow the state to resume lethal injections.
The state's current death-penalty statute "provides reasonable guidelines" to corrections officials who will figure out the precise way to carry out a lethal injection, Justice Karen R. Baker wrote in an opinion explaining the court's 4-to-3 decision.
Because the current state law outlines the method of execution and the overall policy, as well as the drugs that will be used, including the order and the amount, it stands apart from an earlier death-penalty law that the justices struck down 3 years ago, Baker wrote in the order.
"I am hopeful that this decision will allow the convictions of those on death row to move forward so that some closure and justice is brought to the families of the victims," Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said in a statement Thursday. While she was a candidate last year, Rutledge said she thought executions should resume in the state.
The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the state's death-penalty statute was unconstitutional because it left the Department of Corrections in charge of the type of drugs that would be used in lethal injections, giving too much leeway to the department.
In a dissent Thursday, Justice Robin F. Wynne wrote that the current law still has the same problems that led the court to strike down the earlier statute. While the new law does direct corrections officials to administer a barbiturate, pointing to a particular type of drugs, it is not specific enough because of "the wide range of barbiturates" that are available, Wynne wrote.
This court ruling comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to take up the issue of lethal injection next month, which could alter the way executions are carried out in the country. The justices will hear a case involving executions in Oklahoma, which uses the controversial sedative midazolam in its lethal injections. They last considered this subject in 2008, when the court upheld the lethal injection formula used by Kentucky and dozens of other states.
However, since that ruling, the lethal injection process across the country has fractured. A shortage of the drugs used in lethal injections has prompted states to turn to untested alternatives as they strive to continue carrying out executions. As a result, the process upheld in 2008 has been largely abandoned as states struggled to adopt new methods.
Arkansas has carried out 27 executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the 13th-highest total for any state in that span. The last person executed in the state was Eric Nance, who was put to death in 2005 for killing 18-year-old Julie Heath.
There are 32 inmates on death row in Arkansas, a number that was reached when an inmate serving a life sentence was sentenced to death last year for killing a corrections officer.
Source: Washington Post, March 19, 2015
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