Eight death-row prisoners whom Arkansas has scheduled to be executed in the next four months have asked a judge to issue a preliminary injunction that would put their executions on hold. They argue that the state’s execution procedures are unconstitutional for multiple reasons and that Arkansas’ secrecy law violates a previous settlement agreement between death row inmates and the state. Arkansas, which has not carried out an execution since November 2005, has scheduled eight executions for four dates (two executions on each date) between October of this year and January 2016, even though legal challenges to the constitutionality of the state’s execution procedures were pending in state court and were scheduled to proceed to trial. The state recently passed a bill that allows the Department of Correction to keep the source of execution drugs secret. Jeff Rosenzweig, an attorney for the death row inmates, said the secrecy law violates an agreement in which the state agreed to tell inmates the source of lethal injection drugs in exchange for the inmates dropping part of a prior lawsuit challenging the state’s execution protocol. The inmates argue that, without knowing the manufacturer of the drugs, they cannot determine whether the execution may constitute cruel and unusual punishment. They are seeking a preliminary injunction blocking executions from proceeding until the case is decided. A state trial court has moved the hearing date for the inmates’ lawsuit from October 23 to October 7. In June 2012, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down the state’s prior execution law as violating the state constitution. [UPDATE: On October 9, the Arkansas trial court judge who is presiding over the inmates’ challenge to the state’s execution process granted a temporary restraining order staying all of the scheduled executions. The court ruled that the prisoners would suffer “immediate and irreparable injury” if they were executed and that proceeding with the executions, without affording the parties an adequate opportunity for discovery and to resolve the legal issues in the case “will rob Plaintiffs of an opportunity to litigate their rights under the Arkansas Constitution.”]

(C. Lauer, “Arkansas Death Row Inmates Ask for Preliminary Injunction,” Associated Press, October 1, 2015; T. Nashrulla, “Arkansas Judge Halts Eight Executions After Legal Challenge From Inmates,” BuzzFeed, October 9, 2015.) See Lethal Injection.

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