Court rulings blocks Arkansas plan for multiple executions

Arkansas suffered two more legal setbacks Wednesday in its unprecedented plan to carry out multiple executions this month when the state supreme court halted one and a judge later ruled that the state cannot use one of its drugs in any executions.

While both of Wednesday’s rulings could be overturned, Arkansas now faces an uphill battle to execute any inmates before the end of April, when another of its drugs expires. 

The state originally planned to carry out eight executions to occur over an 11-day period in April, which would have been the most by a state in such a compressed period since the US supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

But Arkansas has faced a wave of legal challenges, and the latest ruling from Pulaski County circuit judge Alice Gray upends the entire schedule. 

The first ruling, on Wednesday evening, halted the execution due the following day of Stacey Johnson so he could make fresh DNA claims to prove his innocence.

Johnson was convicted of the murder of Carol Heath, who was beaten and had her throat slit in her flat in 1993. Her two young children were at home at the time.

Moments after the first ruling, a district judge blocked the use of one of the lethal injection drugs, halting all seven executions.

Gray backed a lawsuit by drugs company McKesson, the supplier of the muscle relaxant vecuronium bromide that argued that it had been sold to the prison system on the understanding it would be used solely for medical purposes, and not for executions.

The company argued that it would suffer financial and reputational harm if the executions were carried out.

"Irreparable harm will result. Harm that could not be addressed by [monetary] damages," Gray said in a ruling from the bench.

Judd Deere, a spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, said the state will appeal Gray's ruling.

The pace of executions has prompted criticism from rights' groups.