Arkansas overcomes legal hurdles, carries out execution
VARNER, Ark. — Arkansas overcame a flurry of court challenges that derailed three other executions, putting to death an inmate for the first time in nearly a dozen years as part of a plan that would have been the country’s most ambitious since the death penalty was restored in 1976.
Ledell Lee’s lethal injection Thursday capped a chaotic week of legal wrangling that left Arkansas scrambling to salvage any part of its attempt to execute eight men before one of its drugs expires at the end of April.
Lee, 51, was pronounced dead at 11:56 p.m., four minutes before his death warrant was due to expire. He was put on death row for the 1993 death of his neighbour Debra Reese, whom he struck 36 times with a tire tool her husband had given her for protection. Lee was arrested less than an hour after the killing after spending some of the $300 he had stolen from Reese.
The state originally set four double executions over an 11-day period in April. The eight executions would have been the most by a state in such a compressed period since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.