Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — A federal judge ruled today that death-row inmate Don William Davis can join a lawsuit that halted the execution of another condemned killer.

U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes granted a motion by Davis, scheduled to be executed April 12, to intervene in a lawsuit by Jack Harold Jones Jr., who won a stay of execution last week.

Jones, who was to be executed Tuesday, alleges in his lawsuit that the state Methods of Execution Act, approved last year, is unconstitutional because it hinders his ability to pursue a legal claim by denying him access to the actual lethal injection protocol that will be used to execute him.

U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes last week ruled that “the public interest would be served” if the court considered Jones’ claims.

State Attorney General Dustin McDaniel later asked the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis to dissolve the stay, but a three judge-panel of the court declined to act Tuesday.

Holmes said in his ruling today that “Davis’ intervention will neither unduly delay nor prejudice the adjudication of the rights of the original parties.”

Davis was sentenced to death in the 1990 slaying of Jane Daniel of Rogers.