Federal appeals court upholds ruling that allows Arkansas prison system to set execution protocols

A federal appeals court has turned down appeals by eight Arkansas death row inmates who claim that the state's rules and procedures for executions are unconstitutional.

Marcel Wayne Williams filed 1 lawsuit and 7 other condemned inmates filed a similar court action. A 3-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis addressed both lawsuits in its Friday ruling, saying the inmates raised only speculative concerns.

A related lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court is under appeal by the state. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports (http://bit.ly/9eghoo) that Circuit Judge Tim Fox ruled in August that a portion of a law the Legislature passed in 2009 governing executions is unconstitutional.

Fox found that the law improperly gave the Department of Correction too much authority in choosing drugs to be used in lethal injections.

The state has no scheduled executions.

The other inmates suing are Jack Harold Jones, Don William Davis, Alvin Bernal Jackson, Stacey Eugene Johnson, Kenneth Dewayne Williams, Jason Farrell McGehee and Bruce Earl Ward.

U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes dismissed the lawsuits in 2010, after finding that the inmates raised only speculation that the Correction Department would change execution procedures without notice. The inmates also argued that giving the department the power to set execution procedures instead of the Legislature induced anxiety as they worried that the department could change procedures.

But the appeals court agreed with Holmes, writing that a "conceivable" risk does not rise to the level of a "significant risk" of increased punishment.

Source: Associated Press, October 8, 2011