AG Candidate Wants Electric Chair Executions To Resume
by April 1, 2014 6:24 am 103 views
GOP Attorney General candidate David Sterling says he supports executions in Arkansas by the electric chair after the current method of lethal injection has been gummed up in the legal system for nearly a decade.
Sterling said in remarks first reported by the Associated Press last week that he doesn’t understand why the electric chair hasn’t been used in recent years.
“The electric chair is still authorized to be used in executions in the state of Arkansas. The electric chair has withstood constitutional scrutiny throughout the country for many, many decades. And so with it being available as a method of execution, I’m not sure why we’re not employing it,” Sterling told AP last week.
Last summer, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel told the state’s sheriffs that the execution process was “completely broken” and that other forms of enforcing the death penalty might be deemed “too barbaric” by today’s societal standards.
Elicia Dover with our content partner, Ch. 7 News, talked to all four candidates currently running for Attorney General about the subject.
Arkansas hasn’t executed a prisoner since 2005. All of the Attorney General candidates would like to see executions carried out in the state, but one would like to see the return of the electric chair.
Arkansas has 37 inmates awaiting execution on death row. The average inmate has been there 15 years, six of them have been there more than 20 years.
Lawsuits by inmates challenging the medical procedure, lawsuits requiring legislation showing more details of the process, even lawsuits requiring doctor’s names who administer the injection be released, are just a few of the challenges that have halted executions.
Arkansas law says if lethal injection isn’t available, the fall back method is the electric chair, something Sterling says he supports.
“It is prescribed under Arkansas law and i think we should move forward with Arkansas law and carry out these penalties,” Sterling said.
Watch Dover’s full report at this link, which includes comments from the other Attorney General candidates, Leslie Rutledge, Patricia Nation, and Nate Steel.