Arkansas panel bats down execution curbs

Two death-qualifier bills fail

Ending executions in Arkansas -- or at least significantly reducing their frequency -- was debated in a House committee Tuesday, with lawmakers broadly voicing support for the death penalty.

In a pair of voice votes, the House Judiciary Committee rejected bills proposing a prohibition of the death sentence for someone with serious mentally illness (House Bill 2170) and requiring the death penalty to be applied only if there is no doubt of guilt (HB1798).

Another proposal, House Bill 2103, was presented to the committee to remove the death penalty altogether from the state's sentencing statutes, but it was pulled down by its sponsor, state Rep. Vivian Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, who said later Tuesday that she would instead seek a legislative study on the matter.

Flowers said she is under no illusions about the feelings of the heavily Republican committee.

"There is an opportunity for us to move in another direction," Flowers said. "This was just the beginning of the conversation."

Four Democrats have seats on the 20-member committee. Only Rep. Charles Blake, D-Little Rock, the sponsor of HB1798, voiced support for both proposals.

Also sitting on the committee is Rep. Rebecca Petty, R-Rogers, whose 12-year-old daughter was kidnapped, raped and murdered in 1999 by a man now on Arkansas' death row.

"It's not something I'm open to," Petty said of abolishing the death penalty.

Neither are Arkansans, both critics and proponents said. A public opinion researcher brought in by Flowers to testify said one 2014 poll showed more than two-thirds of Arkansans supported the death penalty, though he said that was down from previous decades.

Arkansas is among 31 states that have the death penalty. Arkansas has gone longer without an execution than any other Southern state since carrying out the last one. Legal challenges and trouble maintaining a supply of execution drugs have kept Arkansas' execution chamber quiet for more than a decade. Eric Nance, a convicted murderer, was put to death by lethal injection in November 2005.

That's set to change next month. Gov. Asa Hutchinson has scheduled eight inmates to die over the course of 10 days. The rapid pace of Hutchinson's execution schedule is due, in part, to one of the drugs expiring days after the last execution is scheduled to take place.

Two of the inmates set to die have clemency hearings scheduled for Friday. Three more hearings are set for next week.

Death penalty critics pointed out that that innocent people have wound up on death row.

Citing statistics from the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Flowers said 156 people on death row have been exonerated, or about one for every 10 executions in the time period of the exonerations. Blake's bill, HB1798, would raise the standard of guilt to "beyond any doubt" for a sentence of death.

"We shouldn't be killing people if we're 95 percent sure," Blake said.

Prosecutors doubted that standard could ever be met, and Rep. David Whitaker, D-Fayetteville, who said he is against the death penalty, said it was not enough to ease concerns of killing an innocent person.

"Beyond a reasonable doubt is the only standard anyone can agree on," Whitaker said. "When the death penalty is an option, we can never be sure enough."

Petty said that if changes are made to Arkansas' capital punishment laws, they should be to hasten the process, such as limiting the appeals process.

"Grave crimes deserve grave punishment," Petty said. "It's time for justice to be served for these families."

A Section on 03/22/2017

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