http://www.attn.com/stories/16169/arkansas-about-go-execution-spreeThe state of Arkansas hasn't executed anyone since 2005, but it is about to go on what the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas is calling "a ghastly assembly line of death."
The state is planning to carry out eight executions in 10 days, beginning April 17.
The impetus for the state's run of executions is that its supply of midazolam — an anesthetic used as one part of a lethal injection cocktail — is going to expire at the end of April. As NPR reports, the sedative, which the state has never used in an execution, is meant to "render inmates unconscious so they don't feel pain from the subsequent drugs that cause death."
Midazolam has been implicated in a number of botched executions where inmates weren't properly sedated — and took nearly an hour to die. A number of states had been barred by federal courts from using the chemical, including Mississippi and Ohio. However, the Supreme Court later upheld the drug's use in a 2015 decision.
Of additional concern for anti-death penalty activists is that the last time a state attempted to carry out two executions in one day — three years ago in Oklahoma — the first was a midazolam execution that went so badly that the second one was called off.
Petition - https://action.aclu.org/secure/Arkansas-Executions