Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — A federal judge today stayed the scheduled executions of two-death row inmates who joined a lawsuit challenging Arkansas’ lethal injection procedure.
U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes dismissed the lawsuit but stayed the executions of condemned killers Don W. Davis and Stacey Eugene Johnson pending appeal. Davis was set to die April 12 and Johnson was scheduled to die May 4.
Last month, death-row inmate Jack Harold Jones Jr. filed a lawsuit challenging the state Methods of Execution Act, approved last year by the Legislature. The lawsuit claims the law 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.
Holmes agreed to hear Jones lawsuit and stayed his scheduled March 16 execution. Davis, Johnson and four other death-row inmates later were allowed to intervene in the case.
In today’s ruling, Holmes described the lawsuit as “speculation,” but granted the stays for Davis and Johnson because he had previously granted a stay for Jones.
“The issues raised are serious and the plaintiffs are entitled to appeal the dismissal of their complaint,” Holmes wrote. “Absent a stay of execution, Davis and Johnson could suffer irreparable harm. The balance of harm and public interest support a stay of execution.”
Davis was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the 1990 execution-style slaying of Jane Daniel of Rogers.
Johnson was sentenced to death for the 1993 slaying of Carol Health, who was killed in her De Queen apartment.
Jones was sentenced to death for raping and killing Bald Knob bookkeeper Mary Phillips in 1995. Phillips’ daughter also was severely beaten in the attack.
