The Latest on Arkansas' effort to execute a fourth inmate before its supply of a lethal injection drug expires on Sunday : An Arkansas inmate executed for the 1999 killing of a former deputy warden following an escape lurched 20 times on the gurney before three lethal drugs took his life. Kenneth Williams was executed Thursday night.
This March 25, 2017, file photo, shows a sign for the Department of Correction's Cummins Unit prison in Varner, Ark. Death-row inmate Kenneth Williams is scheduled to die at the prison unit Thursday, April 27, 2017, for the killing of a former deputy prison warden following an escape.
Arkansas will reach the end of an aggressive execution schedule Thursday as it prepares for a fourth lethal injection in a week after initially planning twice as many over an 11-day period. Kenneth Williams, 38, is set to die for killing a former deputy warden following an escape.
An Arkansas prisons spokesman says the first inmate executed Monday night was speaking to the Arkansas Department of Correction director shortly after his lethal injection began. Spokesman Solomon Graves says Jack Jones was talking to prisons director Wendy Kelley at the start of his execution, which lasted 14 minutes.
Arkansas has executed the first of two men scheduled to die in the first U.S. double execution since 2000. Jack Jones Jr., 52, was the first prisoner put to death Monday night.
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.
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.