As Arkansas Restocks Execution Drugs, Lawyers Plea No Death For 'Mentally Ill' Inmate

LITTLE ROCK, AR — Arkansas has re-upped on a controversial lethal injection drug, officials said Thursday, and Gov. Asa Hutchinson plans to set an execution date for a convicted killer.

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge asked Hutchinson to set an execution date for Jack Greene, who was convicted in the 1991 slaying of Sidney Jethro Burnett, who accused Greene of arson. Greene has no more appeals available to him, Rutledge said, and there's no stay of execution in place. Hutchinson's office said he intends to schedule a date, but doesn't have a timeline yet.

Arkansas executed four prisoners in April but wanted to execute eight men. The state scheduled the executions to occur before its supply of midazolam expired. The drug is used as a sedative in the three-drug lethal injection processDepartment of Correction Spokesman Solomon Graves said the state obtained the new supply on Aug. 4 and it expires in January 2019. A state law keeps the source of the state's execution drugs secret. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Documents released by the Department of Correction show the state paid $250 in cash for 40 vials of midazolam.

Greene's attorneys argue that the convicted killer is severely mentally ill, saying he suffers from a fixed delusion that prison officials are conspiring with his attorneys to cover up injuries he believes corrections officers have inflicted on him. The delusions cause Greene to constantly twist his body and stuff his ear and nose with toilet paper to cope with the pain, his attorneys said.

"Capital punishment should not be used on vulnerable people like the severely mentally ill," John C. Williams, an assistant federal defender representing Greene, said in a statement. "We hope Governor Hutchinson will refrain from setting an execution date for Mr. Greene since he is not competent for execution."

The executions in April were Arkansas' first since 2005 and its first using midazolam. Death penalty opponents say the drug is incapable of inducing unconsciousness or preventing serious pain. The sedative has been used in several problematic executions. Kenneth Williams, one of the inmates Arkansas executed in April using the drug, lurched and convulsed 20 times during his execution.

Hutchinson rejected calls for an outside probe of the executions after Williams was put to death.

Greene was not among the four inmates who had been set for execution but then spared by court rulings. Three of those inmates have appeals pending, while Hutchinson is still weighing the Arkansas Parole Board's recommendation that he grant clemency to a fourth prisoner, Jason McGehee.

Prosecutors said Greene beat Burnett with a can of hominy before stabbing him and slitting his throat. Greene had three trials. Death sentences in his first two were overturned because prosecutors improperly used a separate court case as an aggravating circumstance.

At the sentencing phase in his third trial, the court wouldn't let Greene show jurors a letter he had received from Burnett's widow, forgiving him. The court said it didn't reflect on Greene's character and couldn't count as a mitigating factor.

The state is moving forward with the execution while cases are pending before the state Supreme Court and a lower court over a medical supply company's efforts to prevent another drug from being used to put inmates to death. McKesson Medical-Surgical has argued the state purchased its supply of vecuronium bromide from the company under false pretenses.

By ANDREW DeMILLO, Associated Press

Photo credit: Arkansas Department of Corrections via AP