The southern US state of Arkansas, rushing to execute several inmates before a lethal drug expires at the end of the month, put to death Monday a prisoner convicted of raping and murdering a woman in 1995, the attorney general said.
Jack Jones was executed after the US Supreme Court rejected an 11th-hour appeal from his attorneys asking the justices to reconsider a procedural issue from his trial.
Arkansas had planned to put eight convicted murderers to death in 11 days — a record, had it been carried out — but four have won reprieves.
Another execution was scheduled for later Monday night. If Marcel Williams is put to death, it would be the first double execution in the United States since 2000.
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson has said the accelerated execution timetable is necessary as the state’s stock of a sedative used in lethal injections will expire at the end of the month.
Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said in a statement that the daughters of Jones’s victim, 34-year-old Mary Phillips, had finally received justice.
“Mary was performing her job as a bookkeeper in Bald Knob on June 6, 1995, when she was strangled to death with a coffeepot cord while her 11-year-old daughter Lacey clung to life a few feet away after being choked and beaten,” Rutledge said.
“The Phillips family has waited far too long to see justice carried out, and I pray they find peace tonight.”
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