Last Thursday, as the state administered the death penalty for the fourth time in eight days, questions about how to proceed with executions remained very much alive.
Arkansas law declares that executions are private matters, but there is no responsible form of government that should carry out such a penalty without public accountability. Executions and secrecy may be standard practice in places like Japan, China, Syria, Iran and similar countries, but Americans have long expected that someone other than government officials should be present to document a government-sponsored killing as a form of justice.
What’s the point?
Arkansas should remove all policy barriers that limit what unbiased witnesses can see when the state puts an inmate to death.
Why does it matter? Because government officials have been known, once or twice, to reveal only information that supports the government's position on an issue. And, yes, the implication there is also that they've been known to cover up a thing or two.
Arkansas' protocol for killing inmates has been scrutinized in a general sense ad nauseam. Arkansas' conduct of four executions in barely more than a week provided fodder for specific assertions that the lethal injection process amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, something the U.S. Constitution outlaws.
Ledell Lee became the first Arkansas prisoner in a dozen years to die at the hands of an executioner. Witnesses to the April 20 execution said the 12-minute process went smoothly. Even an attorney known as an advocate for death row inmates and against executions said Lee's death "appeared to be without incident."
Then came Jack Jones and Marcel Williams. Jones' death took 14 minutes, during which he moved his lips for about two minutes after the first of three drugs entered his body. A microphone inside the death chamber was turned off, so it was impossible for witnesses to tell if he was speaking. Reporters said they saw no signs of obvious suffering or pain.
But attorneys trying to stop Williams' execution quickly posted a filing in court claiming Jones' death was "torturous" and asserting he was "gulping" for air. State officials called the description "inaccurate." After a two-hour delay, Williams was given the lethal doses. His execution took 17 minutes, during which a reporter said he stopped breathing and "grimaced." He was pronounced dead nine minutes later.
Lastly, was Thursday's killing of Kenneth Williams, which added fuel to the debate over the state's methods. In a 13-minute execution, a reporter documented a period of 10 to 15 seconds in which he was "coughing, convulsing, lurching, jerking with sound even with the [execution chamber] microphone turned off." The reporter said Williams' breathing appeared as a "clear attempt to draw oxygen."
State officials called the shaking an "involuntary muscular reaction." A spokesman for Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who issued the death warrants and had the power to stop the executions, called them "flawless."
On Friday, however, federal public defenders filed a motion seeking to preserve evidence in Williams' execution, arguing the accounts of his death show the "Arkansas execution protocol did not prevent execution by torture." Also Friday, Hutchinson dismissed calls from the American Civil Liberties Union for an investigation beyond the standard review of any inmate's death.
Did what happened to Williams amount to torture, or was it just a natural body reaction to the sedative? It's far beyond our medical expertise to determine.
But what we will assert is how vital the role of unbiased execution witnesses is when it comes to documenting this most serious of punishments. Yet, while the state allows -- indeed, requires -- witnesses, its approach appears designed to limit information those witnesses can actually collect.
For example, reporters were first told they would not be able to take even pens and paper in with them, a ludicrous policy soon reversed by the Arkansas Department of Correction. And the business of turning a death chamber microphone on for an inmate's statement but off for all other aspects of the event? It seems geared toward limiting the available information about what's happening.
Naturally, there will be differing accounts and interpretations of what's seen. But the reason people are there at all are to be witnesses. The state doesn't serve those ends by limiting what those witnesses can see and report. Unbiased witnesses serve as a check and balance against what the state prefers to describe and what opponents to the execution claim.
State law demands witnesses should be present, and they should be. Government policy should let them be full witnesses to this most serious of state actions.
Commentary on 04/30/2017