LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Several Arkansas death row inmates sued the state Tuesday to block a new law allowing executions by nitrogen gas, saying the measure gives prison officials unconstitutionally broad authority to decide how they should die.
Ten inmates filed the lawsuit in state court challenging the law signed this year by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Supporters have promoted the law as a way to carry out executions for the first time in eight years. Arkansas has 23 people on death row.
Arkansas hasn't executed an inmate since 2017, when the state put four men to death before a drug used in its lethal injection process expired. The state has been unable to purchase more lethal injection drugs since because of manufacturers’ opposition to their use in executions, the attorney general’s office has said.
Attorneys for the inmates argue the law violates Arkansas' constitution by giving the Division of Correction authority to decide whether to use lethal injection or nitrogen gas for an execution. The law is also unclear on details surrounding the use of nitrogen gas, the suit says.
“This leaves only questions,” including how the gas would be obtained and how it would be administered, the lawsuit said.
Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement that his office was aware of the lawsuit and was ready to “vigorously defend” the new law.
Under the nitrogen hypoxia execution method, an inmate is forced to breathe the gas and deprived of the oxygen needed to stay alive.
Opponents say the method increases suffering, citing accounts from witnesses to Alabama executions who said inmates gasped and shook during executions. State officials say those are involuntary movements associated with oxygen deprivation.
Arkansas is the fifth state to approve nitrogen gas executions. Alabama, the first state to use nitrogen gas, has carried out five executions using the method since it began last year. Louisiana staged its first in March, putting to death a man convicted of killing a woman in 1996. Two other states — Mississippi and Oklahoma — have laws allowing the method but have not used it so far.
Alabama's law is being challenged in federal court.
The Arkansas inmates also argue that the law cannot be applied retroactively to them, since they were sentenced to die by lethal injection. Attorneys for the inmates said the lack of details on how the state would carry out nitrogen executions raises the risk of a "gruesome and torturous execution."
“Arkansas juries explicitly sentenced our clients to execution by lethal injection – not gas – and the General Assembly cannot rewrite those verdicts to impose death by this very different and highly problematic method,” Heather Fraley, an attorney for the inmates, said in a statement.
Arkansas' law took effect Tuesday, and Sanders in April said she had no timeline for resuming executions and wasn't in a rush.
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