LITTLE ROCK — After supporting the death penalty for years, Gov. Mike Beebe said Wednesday that he no longer favors capital punishment.

Speaking to members of the Political Animals Club of Little Rock, Beebe said he doesn’t expect members of the 89th General Assembly to pass legislation abolishing the death penalty, but he’ll sign it if they do. The Democratic governor’s statement was prompted by a question from the audience.

Beebe has death warrants for eight men since taking office. He said he reads the transcript of each capital-murder trial before authorizing the execution.

Beebe said he wants to be convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, that each condemned person is guilty before signing the paperwork.

“It’s an agonizing process whether you are for the death penalty or against it,” Beebe said. “Everybody can claim they are for it until you are actually the person that hasto sign whatever you’ve had to sign. It is a heart-wrenching experience for the governor.”

Department of Correction spokesman Dina Tyler said the state took over the implementation of the death penalty from the counties in 1913.

The state carried out executions until 1964.

Shortly before leaving office in 1971, Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller commuted the sentences of everyone awaiting execution in Arkansas.

That era’s death-penalty laws were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972.

The court upheld subsequent death-penalty statutes.

Arkansas executions resumed in 1990, and Eric Nance, 45, was the last prisoner executed by the state on Nov. 28, 2005, Tyler said.

Wednesday, Beebe saidsigning the warrants was “next to the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

The warrants were signed between July 31, 2007, and June 6, 2011, according to information provided by the governor’s office.

None of the sentences has been carried out.

There are 37 inmates on death row at the Correction Department, spokesman Shea Wilson said.

In June the state Supreme Court struck down Act 1296 of 2009, the Method of Execution Act, saying the Legislature had “abdicated its responsibility and passed to the executive branch, in this case the [Correction Department], the unfettered discretion to determine all protocol and procedures, most notably the chemicals to be used, for state execution.”

The court stated that the statute left too much up to the department and that it wasthe duty of the Legislature to tell the department how to carry out executions.

The Senate Judiciary Committee was told Dec. 11 thatthe attorney general’s office was drafting a new death-penalty statute that would specify how the sentence should be carried out.

The bill is scheduled to be presented during the 2013 session, but the Correction Department is still working on the bill with the attorney general’s office, Tyler said.

Arkansas is one of only three states in the South that have not carried out an execution in the past five years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that compiles statistics on executions.

West Virginia is the southernmost state that does not have the death penalty, according to the group.

Sen. Bobby Pierce, D-Sheridan, sponsored the Method of Execution Act. He said he doesn’t know of any attempt to repeal the death penalty in Arkansas.

Lt. Gov. Mark Darr, a Republican, said he supports the death penalty as it is but respects the governor’s view. Darr is a potential candidate for governor in 2014.

Front Section, Pages 3 on 01/17/2013