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Thread: Arkansas Capital Punishment News

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    Arkansas Capital Punishment News

    McDaniel Asks For Help In Death Penalty Appeals

    In Little Rock, federal public defenders with deep pockets are straining Arkansas' ability to manage the number of death penalty appeals its lawyers have to handle, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel says.

    "We are in a serious situation with regard to our ability to litigate capitol habeaus cases," the attorney general told the legislative Joint Budget Committee last week. "The public defender has unlimited resources and has taken a unique course in Arkansas to select state cases ... for their resources to be dedicated to."

    Unlike many federal court jurisdictions, Arkansas allows federal public defenders to represent state death-row inmates, McDaniel said.

    The attorney general said he has inquired of Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., what needs to be done to prohibit the practice in Arkansas, but he also asked the budget panel for an additional $400,000 to hire as many as two more attorneys and 2 investigators to help handle the caseload.

    Separate legislation filed last week would designate the attorney general's office as a law enforcement agency, giving McDaniel's investigators access to the state's crime information network.

    Before the budget committee, McDaniel asked lawmakers to approve Senate Bill 86 by Sen. Steve Faris, D-Malvern, that would appropriate $400,000 to his office this year from funds budgeted for the attorney general's office next fiscal year.

    "I'm to the point of potentially losing lawyers who are so overtaxed that if they don't get some help they're talking about having to find another course of employment," McDaniel told lawmakers.

    His office has 6 attorneys who handle death penalty cases.

    Because the bill involves new employees, it was referred to the budget panel's personnel subcommittee.

    Also last week, Sen. Robert Thompson, D-Paragould, filed Senate Bill 112, which would designate the attorney general's office a law enforcement agency.

    Thompson said the legislation, filed at McDaniel's request, would allow attorney general's staff access to the Arkansas Crime Information Center. Only law enforcement agencies have access to the center under state law.

    "In order to do a criminal background check on witnesses, in order do a criminal background check, you have to be a designated law enforcement agency," Thompson said. "This really is a cleanup bill because the federal government has already ruled, or decided, that the Arkansas attorney general's office is a law enforcement agency and allows NCIC (National Crime Information Computer) checks." Some 40 inmates are on death row in Arkansas, and about 35 of them are represented by the federal public defender, McDaniel said.

    The past 2 years, McDaniel said, were especially busy for the attorneys on his staff who handle death penalty appeals.

    Last fall, he said, his office was forced to depose an Australian who argued that based on his viewing of a video showing a convicted murderer's slaying of the victim, he believed the suspect was 2 inches shorter than the person condemned to death for the killing.

    "This despite the video, the trial, the accomplices' testimony and testimony of the defendant," McDaniel said.

    In 2007, after a federal judge issued stays in three executions set by the governor, the attorney general announced a voluntary moratorium on appealing federal court-ordered stays of executions until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a Kentucky case challenging lethal injection.

    In a 7-2 decision last May, the nation’s highest court ruled that the 2 Kentucky death-row inmates who filed the lawsuit failed to show the procedure constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Lethal injection is the most common method of execution in the United States.

    Senate Bill 112 has been assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    Julie Brain, chief of the federal public defenders’ office in Little Rock, declined comment last week.

    (Source: The Morning News)

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    Appeals court says Arkansas' death penalty process is constitutional

    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- A federal appeals court upheld Arkansas' lethal injection procedure. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis finds the procedure is designed "to avoid the needless infliction of pain, not to cause it."

    The Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by three death-row inmates, including two who are scheduled to die over the next nine weeks. Terrick Nooner, Don Williams and Jack Jones Jr. challenged the constitutionality of Arkansas' execution procedures.

    The appeals court ruled Monday that Arkansas' three-drug protocol is "substantially similar to, and perhaps even more thorough than," a Kentucky procedure upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Jones is scheduled to die on March 16 for the death of a bookkeeper from Bald Knob, and has a clemency hearing set for Tuesday.

    http://www.ky3.com/news/local/83809812.html

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    Death-penalty suit advances

    Issues down to 1:Too much say-so for prison chief?

    A lawsuit by eight Arkansas death-row inmates disputing the legality of new execution procedures survived its first challenge on Tuesday but was whittled down to a single question by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox: Did the Legislature violate the Arkansas Constitution by giving away its authority to enforce the death penalty to the Department of Correction?

    Arkansas has not executed an inmate since 2005, and executions are on hold by order of the Arkansas Supreme Court until the 8-month-old case before Fox is resolved.

    A federal stay on executions was lifted in September.

    Fox’s ruling paves the way for the sides to begin the exchange of evidence and testimony collection, which is expected to take months.

    http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2...?news-arkansas

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    Arkansas death row inmates challenge execution drug sodium thiopental, call for inspection

    Eight inmates on Arkansas' death row have filed a court challenge over the state's purchase of a drug used as an anesthetic during executions, claiming there may be a problem with its production.

    The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported Wednesday that the suit seeks an order barring use of sodium thiopental unless it is approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

    The drug is no longer manufactured in the United States, and the suit claims an imported version can't be guaranteed to work without oversight from the federal government.

    The drug is part of a three-drug combination the state uses to put inmates to death.

    http://www.wreg.com/news/sns-ap-ar--...,7749807.story

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    Prison says Arkansas priest caught taking tobacco to death row inmate; visiting rights stopped

    VARNER, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas' prison system says guards found loose tobacco on a priest attempting to visit a death row inmate and that it has suspended the clergyman's visitation rights.

    The Rev. Charles Thessing of Morrilton's Sacred Heart Catholic Church was detained briefly at the Varner Unit prison last Wednesday with a gallon-sized plastic bag half-filled with tobacco. Prison spokeswoman Dina Tyler told The Lincoln American of Star City on Monday that the 49-year-old might permanently lose his right to visit inmates. She did not say whom Thessing was attempting to visit.

    No charge was filed, but state police said an investigation continues. Sacred Heart said Thessing was not available, and Bishop Anthony Taylor of the Diocese of Little Rock was out of town until Thursday and could not be reached for comment.

    http://www.wreg.com/news/sns-ap-ar--...,7932299.story

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    Priest caught taking tobacco to death row charged

    A Roman Catholic priest has been charged with a felony for allegedly trying to smuggle tobacco to a death row inmate.

    Fifty-year-old Rev. Charles Thessing of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Morrilton was charged Wednesday in Lincoln County Circuit Court. He faces three to 10 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine if convicted.

    Thessing did not return a phone call seeking comment. Administrative affairs chancellor Dennis Lee with the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that Thessing remains a priest in good standing.

    Lee was stopped at the Varner Supermax Unit March 23 when a pat-down search uncovered tobacco in a plastic bag tucked in his waistband.

    Prison officials would not identify the death row inmate Lee was attempting to visit.

    http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/P...#ixzz1LTmdLuku

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    I bet the priest was so despaired of the little number of executions in Arkansas, so he was trapped by the anti-smoking-lobby. Giving the inmates tobaco kills them before they die for natural reasons on the Arkansas death row. ;-)

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    Ark. turns over execution drug to feds amid legal questions over how it got it

    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas turned over a supply of a key lethal-injection drug obtained from a British supplier amid legal questions about how it got it, a prison official said Thursday.

    The state gave federal officials all of the sodium thiopental that it received from the London company Dream Pharma, Arkansas Department of Correction spokeswoman Dina Tyler said. It wasn’t clear if the state had other supplies of the drug that weren’t expired.

    The drug was turned over July 5 to the Drug Enforcement Administration for destruction, according to a court document filed Thursday by Arkansas’ attorney general.

    The sole U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental stopped making it in 2009, resulting in a national shortage of the drug, and dropped plans to resume production earlier this year. To make up for the shortage, some states imported the drug from foreign manufacturers. Others switched to different drugs.

    The DEA has taken supplies of sodium thiopental from several other states, including Georgia, where authorities seized the state’s stockpile in March over questions about how the state obtained it.

    Arkansas doesn’t have any scheduled executions, in part because of a lawsuit filed by attorneys for several death row inmates who question the legality of the drug. The Arkansas Supreme Court issued stays for several executions that were scheduled this summer.

    Arkansas’ last execution occurred in 2005.

    William J. Bryant, an assistant special agent in charge at the DEA in Little Rock, declined comment.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...iSI_story.html

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    Attorneys file response in Ark. execution suit

    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Attorneys for death row inmates in Arkansas argue that the state could import more unregulated drugs to be used in executions.

    The comment is part of the latest response in a lawsuit over how the state kills its condemned prisoners.

    It comes after Arkansas correction officials surrendered their stash of sodium thiopental in July amid questions about how it was obtained from a British company called Dream Pharma.

    Arkansas has no pending executions. The state Supreme Court stayed several executions scheduled for this summer because of pending court challenges.

    Attorneys with the attorney general's office and the defense attorneys are to appear before Pulaski County Judge Tim Fox to discuss the case on Monday.

    http://www.katv.com/story/15257821/a...execution-suit

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    Attorneys file response in Ark. execution suit

    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - An Arkansas judge will hear from attorneys for the state and death row inmates in a lawsuit challenging the way Arkansas executes it condemned prisoners.

    A hearing is slated for Monday morning before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox.

    Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's office says part of the suit dealing with drugs used in lethal injections should be dismissed. The state surrendered its supply of a key lethal injection drug last month amid questions about how it obtained it from a British company.

    The inmates' attorneys say Arkansas Department of Correction officials could import more unregulated drugs without action from the court.

    Arkansas hasn't put anyone to death since 2005. It has no pending executions.

    http://www.todaysthv.com/news/articl...xecution-suit-

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