United States: fourth Arkansas execution in eight days prompts questions about inmate’s movements

Arkansas executed a death-row inmate late Thursday in the state’s fourth lethal injection in eight days, concluding a frantic execution schedule officials said was necessary to carry out death sentences before one of their drugs expired.

Witness accounts of the execution, the last one on the schedule in Arkansas, prompted immediate questions after journalists said they saw the inmate lurching and convulsing during the lethal injection.

Attorneys for the death-row inmate — Kenneth Williams, who was convicted of killing a man he fatally shot after escaping from a prison where he was serving a life sentence for another killing — had tried to stop his execution. After it was carried out, they called the witness accounts “horrifying” and called for an investigation.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) said the executions this month were carried out under the state’s protocols, and he dismissed calls for a probe into Williams’s execution, saying there were no indications of pain during any of the lethal injections.

“I see no reason for any investigation other than the routine review that is done after every execution,” Hutchinson said at a news briefing Friday.

Hutchinson said he spoke with Wendy Kelley, director of the Arkansas Department of Correction, to go over what happened during Williams’s execution.

“I was satisfied with the information that I received, and I see nothing that draws questions that would justify anything more than a routine review,” Hutchinson said. The governor also said he saw no need to alter the state’s execution protocols.

Not long after, attorneys for Williams filed a motion in federal court asking for Arkansas officials to preserve physical evidence related to his body, including drawing blood on Friday and preserving brain, liver and muscle tissue. State officials opposed this request, including the description of the execution as “botched,” and said they no longer had Williams’s body or the material the attorneys were seeking.

On Friday evening, U.S. District Judge Kristine G. Baker sided with Williams’s attorneys, ordering the state to collect the tissue samples and to have an autopsy conducted.

Arkansas was already in the spotlight for an aggressive timetable of executions set by Hutchinson, which drew international attention and criticism and pushed the state into the epicenter of American capital punishment.

The state had planned an unprecedented wave of executions, though court orders ultimately blocked half of the scheduled lethal injections, including a second that had also been scheduled for Thursday night. Still, the state was able to resume executions last week for the first time in more than a decade, and this week they carried out three more.

Williams’s execution came late Thursday after his attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that he was intellectually disabled and not fit to be executed. Arkansas officials pushed back, saying these attorneys were only trying to delay his lawful sentence.

Relatives of another of Williams’s victims — a truck driver killed while Williams fled from police in a car chase following his prison escape — also pleaded for his life, asking the governor to call off the execution.

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