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Execution Drug Secrecy Law Upheld in Arkansas

Arkansas’ lethal-injection law is constitutional, a divided state Supreme Court said Thursday in a decision overturning a Pulaski County circuit judge’s ruling that partially struck down the law.

Arkansas’ lethal-injection law is constitutional, a divided state Supreme Court said Thursday in a decision overturning a Pulaski County circuit judge’s ruling that partially struck down the law.

 

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said she will ask Gov. Asa Hutchinson to set new execution dates for eight inmates whose executions have been on hold while the case was pending.

 

Judge Wendell Griffen last year halted the scheduled executions of eight of nine condemned inmates who filed a lawsuit challenging the lethal-injection law — no execution date had been set for one of the inmates — and later ruled that a provision in the law requiring the state Department of Correction to seek to keep secret information about the suppliers of execution drugs was unconstitutional.

 

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge appealed that decision, and in a 4-3 decision the state Supreme Court on Thursday reversed Griffen’s ruling and dismissed the inmates’ suit. The court said Griffen should have dismissed the suit because the inmates did not overcome the state’s sovereign immunity to civil suits.

 

The court’s majority said that to overcome immunity, the inmates would have to show there are questions of fact as to whether they they would be subjected to unconstitutionally cruel or unusual punishment under the state’s plan to execute them via injections of midazolam, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. That would involve showing that a known and available alternative to that plan existed, but the inmates did not do so, the court said.

 

The court also said Griffen erred in agreeing with the inmates that disclosure of the supplier of execution drugs is essential to determining whether the inmates would be subjected to cruel or unusual punishment.

 

The court noted that the state Department of Correction submitted the drugs it obtained to an independent lab for analysis, and that the lab confirmed the drugs were sufficiently potent for their purpose. Disclosing the supplier’s identity would serve no useful purpose, the court said.

 

The court also said Griffen erred in ruling that keeping information secret from the public and the press is harmful to the execution process. The state’s current supply of execution drugs was provided on a condition of anonymity, the majority pointed out.

Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
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