Arkansas executions: first death to go ahead after prisoner's challenge fails

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Guardian


Ledell Lee, who maintains his innocence in a brutal 1993 murder, will become the first to die in state’s historic attempt at quick-fire executions


Ed Pilkington in New York and Jacob Rosenberg in the Cummins Unit, Arkansas
@edpilkington
Friday 21 April 2017 00.47 EDT


Arkansas has begun the execution process for Ledell Lee, one of eight condemned prisoners that the Republican-controlled state had hoped to kill in the space of just 11 days.

The department of corrections cranked into action shortly after 11.30pm local time on Thursday, just half an hour before the inmate’s death warrant had been due to expire. Lee was set to be escorted from a windowless cell just feet from the death chamber at the Cummins Unit in south-east Arkansas, where he had been made to wait for several hours, and then strapped down onto the gurney.

IV lines were attached to his body; they passed through a wall into the room occupied by two executioners who when the time comes have been trained to plunge the syringes into the tubes that led back to him. Lee will be killed with a combination of three medical drugs: medazolam to sedate him, vecuronium bromide to paralyse him, and potassium chloride to stop his heart.

The sudden activity came after a long day of legal wrangling between the Arkansas attorney general’s army of lawyers and a team of defence lawyers that worked doggedly to try and keep Lee alive. In the end, it ended up at the door of the US supreme court, where Neil Gorsuch, the new member of the nation’s highest court, participated in his first decision to send a man to his death.



Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/21/arkansas-executions-first-ledell-lee-death-penalty

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

1. Sigh...

There are very few things that make me feel as discouraged about this country at the death penalty does.

[Judi Lynn]

3. It seems hopeless, at times, especially realizing there were several years without it

before evil surfaced and took the country down again.

In time, this country's going to be civilized, too, although it will have to overcome the kicking and screaming from the grossly overgrown, vicious babies.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

6. I really have to believe if Apartheid South Africa could do it, we could too

It was back and forth between South Africa and Singapore to see who had the higher per capita execution rate any given year, but even they in the late 1980's as a total international pariah on every other front suspended the death penalty.

And here we are...

[question everything]

12. Back in the 90s, when Florida and Texas led the nation in executions

or close enough, I sometimes wanted to ask Barbara Bush whether she was proud with her two sons, the governors of these states.

Probably was..

[elleng]

2. Arkansas Puts Ledell Lee to Death, in Its First Execution Since 2005.

The State of Arkansas, dismissing criticism that it intended to rush too many prisoners to their deaths too quickly, on Thursday night carried out its first execution in more than a decade. Using a lethal injection drug that has been the subject of sharp constitutional debate, the state plans to execute three more men by the end of the month, before its supply of the chemical expires.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/us/arkansas-death-penalty-ledell-lee-execution.html?

[Judi Lynn]

4. They won, humanity lost. Thank you for posting the news.

At least the decades of psychological torture are gone for the prisoner.

[MichMary]

9. And the person he beat to death

was unavailable for comment. I oppose the DP for a variety of reasons, but sensitivity for the criminals' psychological well-being isn't among them.

[uppityperson]

5. W.T.F. They're rushing because 1 of the drugs will expire at the end of April,??? Wtf?

What sort of reason is "the drugs are going to be outdated" for doing a mass killing?

[Arazi]

7. .

So fucking wrong

[DeminPennswoods]

8. I will never understand this

I cannot fathom why states feel the need the rush to kill prisoners. It's not like the prisoner is going anywhere. I keep thinking that the state prosecutors would want to make sure the person they're killing is actually guilty, but the gravity against the state/prosecutors admitting they might have made a mistake must be very, very strong.

I was once in a jury pool where the death penalty was on the table. I always mark the "moral objection" block of the juror form because I'm opposed to the death penalty. But, while waiting to be questioned, I had to think seriously about whether or not I could actually vote to kill someone. In the end, I knew I couldn't. And, no, I wasn't picked for the jury, but for having heard about the case.

[MichMary]

10. In the case of Arkansas

the DP drugs were about to expire. Killing people saved them a trip to the drugstore.

[DeminPennswoods]

14. Oh, I know

but if DNA evidence could have cleared this inmate, why not do that before rushing to kill him?

[question everything]

11. You know, in the last several days, with the "go ahead" and stayes, I wondered why Arkansanians

(is this the correct term?) are so blood thirsty.

And then I remembered Bill Clinton, in 1991, suspending his campaign in New Hampshire to go back home to sign the execution of a mentally challenged inmate. The condemned man who did not finish his last meal of pizza, asked to keep it for "later."

This was why I did not vote for him in the 1992 primaries...

[Seeking Serenity]

13. It's "Arkansans" (or "Arkansawers" used by some old folk)

And I remember the controversy nationally when Gov. Clinton left the campaign trail in January 1992 to come back here to ensure Ricky Ray Rector's execution went off as scheduled. But Clinton had to show, contra the image of Michael Dukakis four years earlier, that he was just as tough on crime as any Republican.

(On edit: Corrected error about why Clinton returned to Arkansas for Rector's execution)

[Judi Lynn]

15. It's really hard to forget that man actually thought he could save some of his food for later.

How they could overlook the fact he had no idea of what was happening should haunt them, as it does people of conscience.

[TEB]

16. What I understand

Last edited Fri Apr 21, 2017, 07:04 PM - Edit history (1)

That this man was represented by attorney who was drunk in court. And the judge was having affair with the prosecutor ,As we know there have been innocent men on death row who were executed .