Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson signed orders on February 27 for an unprece­dent­ed eight exe­cu­tions to be car­ried out over a peri­od of eleven days in April. The sched­uled dates for the four sets of dou­ble exe­cu­tions are: April 17, Bruce Ward and Don Davis; April 20, Stacey Johnson and Ledell Lee; April 24, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams; and April 27, Kenneth Williams and Jason McGehee. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge asked that the dates be set after the U.S. Supreme Court on February 21 declined to review a state court deci­sion uphold­ing Arkansas’ lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. Because of drug short­ages and chal­lenges to its lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures, the state has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2005. If all eight exe­cu­tions are per­formed, it will be the first time since 1997 that a state has exe­cut­ed eight peo­ple in one month, when Texas con­duct­ed eight exe­cu­tions in both May and June of that year. No oth­er state has con­duct­ed as many as eight exe­cu­tions in a sin­gle month since exe­cu­tions resumed in the U.S. in 1977, and no state has car­ried out eight exe­cu­tions in ten days. Scheduling two or more exe­cu­tions on the same day is also unusu­al; states have exe­cut­ed two or three inmates on the same day just ten times in the last forty years, and no state has car­ried out more than one dou­ble exe­cu­tion in the same week. The hur­ried sched­ule appears to be an attempt to use the state’s cur­rent sup­ply of eight dos­es of mida­zo­lam, which will expire at the end of April. Arkansas does not cur­rent­ly have a sup­ply of potas­si­um chlo­ride, the killing drug spec­i­fied in its exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, but believes it can obtain sup­plies of that drug pri­or to the sched­uled exe­cu­tion dates. Attorneys for the eight death-row pris­on­ers filed an amend­ed chal­lenge to Arkansas’ lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures in state court on February 25 and wrote a let­ter to the gov­er­nor urg­ing him to recon­sid­er the lethal injec­tion pro­to­col. ​“We believe it would be a mis­take for you to uncrit­i­cal­ly accept the Supreme Court’s opin­ion as a license to use the cur­rent pro­to­col,” the attor­neys said. ​“Not only would our clients suf­fer, but so would our state’s image and moral stand­ing in the eyes of the coun­try and the world.” No state has suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed two pris­on­ers on the same day using mida­zo­lam. Oklahoma attempt­ed to do so on April 29, 2014, but called off the sec­ond exe­cu­tion after the botched exe­cu­tion of Clayton Lockett ear­li­er that night. The eight pris­on­ers sched­uled for exe­cu­tion make up 23% of Arkansas’ cur­rent death row.

(A. DeMillo, ​“Arkansas gov­er­nor sets exe­cu­tion dates for 8 inmates,” Associated Press, February 27, 2017; ​“Multiple exe­cu­tions rare in US, Arkansas just sched­uled 4,” Associated Press, February 27, 2017; S. Barnes, ​“Arkansas Sets Eight Executions for April Despite Drug Shortage,” Reuters, February 27, 2017.) For his­tor­i­cal data, see DPIC’s Execution Database and our analy­sis of the Most U.S. Executions in Shortest Time Span.

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