Arkansas carries out first double execution in US since 2000

Two inmates received lethal injections about three hours apart as Arkansas completed the first double execution in the US since 2000.

Arkansas carries out first double execution in US since 2000

Two inmates received lethal injections about three hours apart as Arkansas completed the first double execution in the US since 2000.

The first inmate, Jack Jones, was executed on schedule, shortly after 7pm local time.

But lawyers for the second, Marcel Williams, convinced a judge minutes later to briefly delay his punishment over concerns about how the earlier one was carried out.

They claimed Jones gasped for air, an account the state's attorney general denied, but the judge lifted her stay about an hour later and Williams was pronounced dead at 10.33pm local time.

In the emergency filing, Williams' lawyers wrote that officials spent 45 minutes trying to place an IV line in Jones' neck before placing it elsewhere.

It argued that Williams, who weighs 400 pounds, could face a "torturous" death because of his weight.

Intravenous lines are placed before witnesses are allowed access to the death chamber.

An Associated Press reporter who witnessed the execution said Jones moved his lips briefly after the drug midazolam was administered, and officials put a tongue depressor in his mouth intermittently for the first few minutes.

His chest stopped moving two minutes after they checked for consciousness, and he was pronounced dead at 7.20pm

Initially, Governor Asa Hutchinson scheduled four double executions over an 11-day period in April.

The eight executions would have been the most by a state in such a short period since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

The state said the executions needed to be carried out before its supply of one lethal injection drug expires on April 30.

Besides the two executions yesterday, Arkansas put to death one other inmate last week and has a final one scheduled for Thursday. Four others have been blocked.

Before last week, Arkansas had not had an execution since 2005 or a double execution since 1999.

Jones was sent to death row for the 1995 rape and killing of Mary Phillips.

He was also convicted of attempting to kill Ms Phillips' 11-year-old daughter and was convicted in another rape and killing in Florida.

Williams was sentenced to death for the 1994 rape and killing of 22-year-old Stacy Errickson, whom he kidnapped from a petrol station in central Arkansas.

The authorities said Williams abducted and raped two other women in the days before he was arrested over Ms Errickson's death.

Williams admitted responsibility to the state Parole Board last month, saying: "I wish I could take it back, but I can't."

In a letter earlier this month, Jones said he was ready to be killed by the state. He used a wheelchair and he had a leg amputated in prison because of diabetes.

The letter, which his lawyer read aloud at his clemency hearing, went on to say: "I shall not ask to be forgiven, for I haven't the right."

Both men were served last mealsyesterday afternoon, Arkansas Department of Correction spokesman Solomon Graves said.

Jones had fried chicken, potato logs with tartar sauce, beef jerky bites, three candy bars, a chocolate milkshake and fruit punch. Williams had fried chicken, banana pudding, nachos, two sodas and potato logs with ketchup.

In recent pleadings before state and federal courts, the inmates said the three drugs Arkansas uses to execute prisoners could be ineffective because of their poor health.

The last state to put more than one inmate to death on the same day was Texas, which executed two killers in August 2000.

Arkansas executed four men in an eight-day period in 1960. The only quicker pace included quadruple executions in 1926 and 1930.

Including Jones and Williams, nine people have been executed in the US this year, four in Texas, three in Arkansas and one each in Missouri and Virginia.

Last year, 20 people were executed, down from 98 in 1999 and the lowest number since 14 in 1991, according to the Death Penalty Information Centre.

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