Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel recently said the state’s death penalty system was “completely broken” and recommended it be abolished if the state’s execution method isn’t changed. McDaniel said, “It’s time for the policy makers of Arkansas to say, ‘Do we continue with a broken system and throwing money and resources at essentially pointless litigation, or do we modify the system?’ And there’s only really two modifications that I see available — it’s either abolish the death penalty or change the method of execution.” He added, “Frankly, I don’t think we are telling jurors the truth when we lead them to believe that they are sentencing someone to death when we really don’t have a viable system with which to execute someone.” In speaking to the Sheriffs Associaton, he criticized the state’s lethal injection protocol because there are no execution drugs available and because of the difficulty in getting physicians to participate in executions. Arkansas currently has 38 inmates on death row. The state’s last execution was in 2005.
(S. Ryburn, “McDaniel: State’s Death-Penalty System ‘Completely Broken’,” Arkansas News Bureau, July 10, 2013; photo from Wikimedia Commons by century council). See Lethal Injection and New Voices.
Recent Legislative Activity
Mar 05, 2024
