By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in a case that could determine whether the state can resume executing death-row inmates.

A federal public defender for Frank Williams Jr., sentenced to die for the October 1992 slaying of Lafayette County farmer Clyde Spence, argued before the state’s highest court that a new state law increases the possibility that death-row inmates’ constitutional rights will be violated.

At attorney for the state argued that the law makes Williams’ lawsuit challenging the state’s lethal injection procedure moot. The court did not immediately issue a ruling.

Williams, whose crime occurred 17 years to the day before today’s hearing, filed a lawsuit last year alleging the state Department of Correction failed to comply with the Arkansas Administrative Procedures Act when it adopted rules regarding lethal injection without subjecting the rules to public review and accepting public comments, as required by the act.

Executions in the state have been on hold while Williams’ lawsuit works its way through the courts.

Earlier this year the state Legislature approved Act 1296 of 2009, which writes the state’s lethal projection procedure into law and declares that the procedure is exempt from the Administrative Procedures Act.

“It is our position that (Act 1296) has rendered this case moot,” Chief Deputy Attorney General Justin Allen told the state Supreme Court today.

Josh Lee, federal public defender for Williams, argued that the new law is flawed. He said the law is not specific enough in setting out the lethal injection procedure, and therefore “Mr. Williams is left in uncertainty and anxiety as to whether he will be subjected to a manner of execution that causes pain or not.”

The new law also declares the lethal injection procedure exempt from the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act. Lee argued public scrutiny of execution procedures is important and reduces the likelihood of problems such as those that occurred during the 1992 execution of Ricky Ray Rector.

Rector, convicted in the 1981 slaying of Conway police officer Bob Martin, was executed after prison workers struggled for about 50 minutes to find a vein. Witnesses reported hearing Rector moan during the procedure.

Allen said Act 1296 leaves no uncertainty as to how inmates are to be executed. He said critics have claimed the law would allow any chemical, even rat poison, to be administered, but that prison officials would be subject to a federal lawsuit if they executed a prisoner in a cruel or unusual manner.

“(Prison Director) Larry Norris or any future prison director would have to be out of his mind” to permit an unconstitutional manner of execution, Allen said.

Allen said after the hearing that if the court rules for the state, “I would expect the attorney general to ask the governor to set some execution dates.”