LITTLE ROCK (KFSM) — Two death row inmates are scheduled to be executed on Monday, April 24, but there is still legal wrangling going on as of late Sunday (April 23) night.
Attorneys for inmates Jack Jones and Marcel Williams appealed the decision by District Judge Kristine Baker to deny their motions for preliminary injunction in their as-applied midazolam claims to the 8th Circuit.
Jones’ lawyer said his client has such poor health and is on so many medications that Jones may be resistant to the lethal injection drug midazolam.
Lawyers for Williams said because he weighs more than 400 pounds it would be difficult to find a vein for the lethal injection, and his client (Williams) would suffer a “tortuous death.”
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has filed the attached responses to those appeals stating the Court should deny Appellant’s motion for a stay of execution pending appeal.
Also, late Sunday (April 23), Williams’s motion for stay of execution was denied by Federal District Court Judge Holmes.
In the two-page document the judge wrote in part, “Williams’s motion for an order from this Court staying his execution is denied … although this court issued a certificate of appealability, it found that Williams’s Rule 60(b) motion is without merit.”
Should the executions happen, this would be the first double executions in the country in more than 16 years.
Background:
Marcel Wayne Williams: Sentenced to death for the murder of Stacy Errickson. On November 20, 1994, Errickson was on her way to work and stopped for gas in Jacksonville early in the morning. Williams approached Errickson and had her move to the passenger side and he drove her car from the convenience store/gas station. Williams had her withdraw cash from several ATMs. The transactions were recorded by security cameras at several of the banks. Errickson did not make it to work that day, nor did she pick up her child from the babysitter at the end of the day. Nine days later, police arrested Williams on an outstanding warrant and over the course of the investigation connected evidence that proved he killed Errickson. Williams was sentenced to death in 1997 for kidnapping, robbing, raping, beating and murdering Errickson.
Jack Harold Jones: In 1996 he was sentenced to death for raping and strangling 34-year-old Mary Phillips and attempting to murder Phillips’ 11-year-old daughter. Jones was also convicted for rape and murder in Florida. That involved the 1991 killing of Lorraine Anne Barrett, 32, in Fort Lauderdale. Jones was linked to the crime in 2003 through DNA testing.
