Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — The 8th U.S. Court of Appeals at St. Louis has upheld the state’s lethal injection procedures.
The ruling by the three-judge panel on Monday upholds the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by three Arkansas death-row inmates, including two who have already had their execution dates set.
“Based on our review of Arkansas’s lethal injection protocol, we conclude that it is designed ‘to avoid the needless inflection of pain, not to cause it,’” the court ruled.
The ruling also said the inmates “failed to establish a genuine issue of material fact about whether the Arkansas protocol subjects them to a substantial risk of serious harm.”
Terrick Nooner, Don William Davis and Jack Jones Jr. had argued that the state’s lethal injection procedures were unconstitutional.
Jones, convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the 1995 rape and slaying of Bald Knob bookkeeper Mary Phillips and an attack on her 11-year-old daughter, is scheduled to be executed March 16
Davis, convicted in the 1990 execution-style slaying of Jane Daniel of Rogers, is scheduled to be executed April 12.
Both men had previously had execution dates set, but a but a judge issued stays pending the outcome of a lethal injection challenge in Kentucky that was before the U.S. Supreme Court at that time.
The law in Kentucky was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008. The Arkansas Legislature last year wrote Arkansas’ lethal injection procedures into law, and the state Supreme Court turned away a challenge to the law brought by Arkansas inmates.
