Arkansas Can't Find Enough People to Watch Its Ghastly Inmate Executions
LatestEarlier this month, the New York Times reported that the state of Arkansas intends to execute eight incarcerated people over a span of 10 days in April. The pace of Arkansas’ executions has been kicked into unprecedented (at least in recent U.S. history) high gear due to a looming expiration date for one of the state’s lethal injection drugs. Of the eight men slated for execution, all convicted of murders that occurred between 1989 and 1999, four are black and four are white.
On Saturday, the Times reported on a fresh logistical road-block to state-sanctioned murder: no one wants to watch it happen. Arkansas has a law that requires six to 12 “respectable citizens” (meaning they have no felony history or relation to the people being killed and are at least 21 years old) bear witness to an execution, ostensibly to ensure that protocol is followed.