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The state of Arkansas will resume efforts this week to execute death row inmates before its supply of sedatives used in lethal injection expires. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson scheduled eight executions in 11 days, the most in the shortest amount of time since capital punishment returned to the United States in the 1970s, creating a race against the clock and a tangled web of legal challenges.
Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen issued a temporary restraining order stopping the state from using the drug of vecuronium bromide for lethal injections. "We are calling on state officials to accept the federal court's decision, cancel the frantic execution schedule, and propose a legal and humane method to carry out its executions".
The removal of conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly from his top-rated Fox News show over allegations of sexual harassment "is an important next step to clean up Fox News and make it a respectful and professional work environment", says the attorney representing Gretchen Carlson in her harassment case against Roger Ailes-the network's founding President who left the company a year ago in a scenario that mirrors O'Reilly's departure. Fox News Channel announced Wednesday O'Reilly has immediately departed the network.
The State had planned to execute eight inmates over 10 days starting April 17, but four of the men have received stays for various reasons. Before Lee's death, all executions were put on hold in the state after a judge issued a restraining order on a key lethal injection drug.
President Donald Trump set the stage Friday for a rollback of regulations that were intended to curtail corporate tax evasion and prevent another financial crisis. Frustrated by the slow pace in Congress on his goal of overhauling the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation law and the fact that his mission of rewriting the tax code remains in limbo, Mr. Trump ordered his Treasury Department on Friday to review measures put in place by the Obama administration.
In this Tuesday, April 18, 2017 file photo, Ledell Lee appears in Pulaski County Circuit Court for a hearing in which lawyers argued to stop his execution which is scheduled for Thursday. Unless a court steps in, Lee and Stacey Johnson are set for execution Thursday night.
After a protracted legal battle, Arkansas carried out its first execution since 2005 using the controversial drug, Midazolam. Ledell Lee, who was convicted of murder in 1995, died on Thursday night at 11:56 p.m., twelve minutes after receiving the lethal drug cocktail.
Arkansas executed its first inmate in 12 years on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the inmate's request to halt the lethal injection in a late-night ruling. Ledell Lee, 51, was the first to be put to death out of a group of eight men that Arkansas originally planned to execute within a span of 11 days, before the expiration of one of the drugs the state uses for the lethal injection.
Arkansas was able to conduct its first execution in nearly a dozen years despite a flurry of legal challenges that had spared three convicted killers, but courts still could scuttle the remainder the nation's most ambitious death penalty schedule since capital punishment was restored in 1976. Ledell Lee was pronounced dead at 11:56 p.m. Thursday, four minutes before his death warrant was due to expire at midnight, capping a chaotic week of legal wrangling.
In this Monday evening, April 17, 2017 photo, the sun sets behind clouds over an Arkansas State Police command post outside the Varner Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction near Varner, Ark. As state officials prepare to carry out a double execution Thursday ahead of a drug expiration deadline and despite the setback the U.S. Supreme Court delivered late Monday, lawyers for those condemned men look to be taking a different approach: claiming the prisoners are actually innocent.
Updated: The on-again off-again attempts by Arkansas to execute multiple death row inmates were off again Wednesday evening after two court actions halted a plan to carry out two of the death sentences Thursday, NBC News reports. In a sweeping decision yesterday, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Alice Gray put the execution of Ledell Lee on hold, ruling that the prison cannot use its supply of vecuronium bromide, a paralytic that is part of the three-drug mixture used by the state for lethal injections.
In this Monday evening, April 17, 2017 photo, the sun sets behind clouds over an Arkansas State Police command post outside the Varner Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction near Varner, Ark. As state officials prepare to carry out a double execution Thursday ahead of a drug expiration deadline and despite the setback the U.S. Supreme Court delivered late Monday, lawyers for those condemned men look to be taking a different approach: claiming the prisoners are actually innocent.
Arkansas has said it will appeal a court ruling that bars the U.S. state's use of a lethal injection drug and effectively puts a stop to its plans to execute eight prisoners in 11 days. A state circuit judge issued the temporary restraining order on Wednesday after the U.S. pharmaceutical firm McKesson Medical-Surgical Inc accused the state of obtaining the muscle relaxant vecuronium bromide under false pretences.
The legal fight in Arkansas , which last put someone to death 12 years ago, came after the number of USA executions fell to a quarter-century low in 2016. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled that judge, stating in its opinion that there's only "equivocal evidence" that midazolam will raise the risk of a painful execution.
I've never beheld such a powerful official hankering to kill and kill now as was evident Monday night in the political leadership of Arkansas. The state had weathered a wild flurry of late-afternoon court decisions that shook out this way: Instead of killing seven death row inmates in 11 days starting Monday night, the state would be allowed to kill five death row inmates over a week starting Thursday night.
In this Monday evening, April 17, 2017 photo, the sun sets behind clouds over an Arkansas State Police command post outside the Varner Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction near Varner, Ark. As state officials prepare to carry out a double execution Thursday ahead of a drug expiration deadline and despite the setback the U.S. Supreme Court delivered late Monday, lawyers for those condemned men look to be taking a different approach: claiming the prisoners are actually innocent.
In this Monday evening, April 17, 2017 photo, the sun sets behind clouds over an Arkansas State Police command post outside the Varner Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction near Varner, Ark. As state officials prepare to carry out a double execution Thursday ahead of a drug expiration deadline and despite the setback the U.S. Supreme Court delivered late Monday, lawyers for those condemned men look to be taking a different approach: claiming the prisoners are actually innocent.
Arkansas' attempt to carry out its first execution in nearly 12 years wasn't thwarted by the type of liberal activist judge Republicans regularly bemoan here, but instead by a state Supreme Court that's been the focus of expensive campaigns by conservative groups to reshape the judiciary. The court voted 4-3 Monday night to stay the executions of two inmates who were part of an unprecedented plan to put eight men to death in 11 days.
In this Monday evening, April 17, 2017 photo, the sun sets behind clouds over an Arkansas State Police command post outside the Varner Unit of the Arkansas Department of Correction near Varner, Ark. As state officials prepare to carry out a double execution Thursday ahead of a drug expiration deadline and despite the setback the U.S. Supreme Court delivered late Monday, lawyers for those condemned men look to be taking a different approach: claiming the prisoners are actually innocent.
Lawyers for Arkansas inmates condemned to die Thursday in a planned double execution are claiming they are innocent and one of them says advanced DNA techniques could show he didn't kill a woman in 1993. Their strategy to win stays of execution is in marked contrast to the first two inmates who faced the death chamber in Arkansas and were spared Monday by arguing they should not be put to death because of mental health issues.