Again, we the people of Arkansas have exercised our collective power to kill prison inmates.
This time we killed two men, each a confessed killer.
They were put to death in successive executions Monday night about three hours apart, bringing the number of Arkansas executions in recent days to three, with one more scheduled later this week.
Four other inmates, all of whom had been slated to die this month before a drug used in the deadly execution cocktail expires, have been spared -- at least temporarily.
Jack Jones and Marcel Williams were the latest to be executed. Their "double execution" was the first in the U.S. since 2000. Ledell Lee's execution came Thursday. He was the first prisoner Arkansas had executed in a dozen years. All three men had spent more than 20 years on death row.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson initially scheduled four double executions over an 11-day period, bringing worldwide attention to Arkansas' continued use of the death penalty in capital murder cases.
The rapid schedule has heightened awareness and provoked continuing and uncomfortable discussions about the death penalty in various state and national forums, including social media.
Yes, juries decided decades ago that each of these men should die. Judges oversaw their criminal trials. Appellate justices have since reviewed the cases as did the state's parole board and Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who signed their death warrants.
Responsibility nevertheless resides with the people of Arkansas, whose collective will these and other public servants are carrying out. Never lose sight of that fact.
Until there is a major reversal of opinion in this state or intervention from the federal level, expect capital punishment to continue here. The method could change but the availability of the death penalty likely won't.
For now, we are forced to go through an agonizing process that recalls to victims' families their worst experiences and bares the questions that shape our individual and collective thinking about the rightness or wrongness of capital punishment.
What has been a continuous string of legal appeals on behalf of these eight condemned Arkansas inmates, either collectively or individually, kept the focus on the courts as first one judge or another stayed executions only to have the stays overturned in the three cases that recently ended in execution. We'll know Thursday the fate of the lone inmate with an active death warrant against him.
Notably, among the jurists weighing in on the death penalty decisions was Neil Gorsuch, the newest justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The newcomer sided with four other conservatives on the nation's high court to deny a stay for Ledell Lee and other inmates last week. The Supreme Court's four liberal justices said they would have stayed execution.
Lee died minutes later for a 1993 crime for which he maintained his innocence. He was convicted of bludgeoning Debra Reese of Jacksonville to death with a tire tool after invading her home.
Unlike Lee, both Jones and Williams admitted their guilt.
Jones was convicted of the 1995 rape and murder of Mary Phillips in Bald Knob (White County). He was also convicted of attempted murder of Phillips' 11-year-old daughter and in another rape and murder in Florida.
Williams was convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of Stacy Errickson of Jacksonville, after kidnapping her from a gas station.
Authorities said Williams abducted and raped two other women in the days before he was arrested in Errickson's death.
All of these are horrendous crimes, precisely the sort for which the death penalty is prescribed.
Still, the inherent unfairness in how it is applied, the way different defendants are represented at trial, the attendant delays that squelch the deterrence argument, and, of course, the possibility that an innocent person might be unjustly condemned -- all give reason for each of us to rethink capital punishment.
Commentary on 04/26/2017