Lawyers Call for Investigation of ​“Horrifying” Arkansas Execution After Witnesses Report ​“Coughing, Convulsing”

Calling eye­wit­ness accounts ​“hor­ri­fy­ing,” attor­neys for Arkansas pris­on­er Kenneth Williams (pic­tured) are seek­ing the preser­va­tion of evi­dence and ​“a full inves­ti­ga­tion” into what they described as Williams’ ​“prob­lem­at­ic execution.” 

Williams’ attor­ney, Shawn Nolan, said the lawyers had ​“tried over and over again to get the state to com­port with their own pro­to­col to avoid tor­tur­ing our client to death, and yet reports from the exe­cu­tion wit­ness­es indi­cate that Mr. Williams suf­fered dur­ing this execution.” 

Media wit­ness­es report­ed that they observed Williams ​“cough­ing, con­vuls­ing, lurch­ing, jerk­ing, with sound that was audi­ble even with the micro­phone turned off” dur­ing his exe­cu­tion. According to Associated Press reporter Kelly Kissel, ​“Williams’ body jerked 15 times in quick suc­ces­sion — lurch­ing vio­lent­ly against the leather restraint across his chest.” Kissel, who has wit­nessed ten exe­cu­tions, said, ​“This is the most I’ve seen an inmate move three or four minutes in.” 

Nolan called the sit­u­a­tion ​“very dis­turb­ing, but not at all sur­pris­ing, giv­en the his­to­ry of the risky seda­tive mida­zo­lam, which has been used in many botched executions.” 

A spokesper­son for Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson dis­missed the wit­ness accounts, call­ing the exe­cu­tion ​“flaw­less” and Williams’ move­ment an ​“invol­un­tary mus­cu­lar reac­tion.” Nolan char­ac­ter­ized the spokesper­son­’s state­ment as ​“sim­ply try­ing to white­wash the real­i­ty of what happened.”

Williams was the fourth per­son exe­cut­ed in Arkansas in eight days. The state had orig­i­nal­ly planned to exe­cute eight pris­on­ers in eleven days, but courts stayed four of the exe­cu­tions for rea­sons spe­cif­ic to those prisoners. 

Experts, includ­ing for­mer cor­rec­tion­al offi­cials, had warned that the rushed exe­cu­tion sched­ule increased the risk of prob­lem­at­ic exe­cu­tions, and attor­neys for the pris­on­ers chal­lenged the use of mida­zo­lam as the first drug in the three-drug exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, argu­ing it would not ade­quate­ly anes­thetize the pris­on­er. Three days before Kenneth Williams’ exe­cu­tion, prob­lems were report­ed in Arkansas’ exe­cu­tion of Jack Jones, but a fed­er­al judge allowed the state to pro­ceed with the exe­cu­tion of Marcel Williams on the same night.